A phone call from Oklahoma, a shipment from Iran and a store in Texas.

Momeni dates itself to 1975, and the company’s own website still carries the line “A Tradition of Quality since 1975.” Rug News, in a January 2005 report on the company’s 30th anniversary, says that this was the year Ali Akbar (Haji) Momeni and his son Ahmad Momeni incorporated Momeni, Inc. in New York City. Rug Insider, writing for the company’s 50th anniversary in March 2025, describes the founder as Haji Ali Momeni, an Iranian immigrant, and says he co-founded the company with his eldest son, Ed Momeni, as a distributor of handmade Persian rugs.

The American story starts a little earlier. Rug News says the company’s United States beginnings go back to 1969, when Ahmad was a student at the University of Oklahoma. In a phone call home to Iran, he told his father that people at the university often spoke about the beautiful rugs that came from Persia. Two months later, the magazine says, two large bales of Persian rugs arrived for Ahmad with a short instruction from his father: sell them.

He did. Rug News says Ahmad began selling the rugs to professors and fellow students, and later drove across the country selling them. Haji joined him, and father and son opened a small retail store in Austin, Texas, selling one-of-a-kind Persian rugs. In 1975 the two moved to New York and formed Momeni, Inc. as an importer of fine Oriental rugs.

The early business was built on Iranian goods, and politics soon changed that. Rug Insider says that after the 1979 hostage crisis and the breakdown of relations between the United States and Iran, Momeni could no longer import directly from Iran, and it began to look for new sources. Reza Momeni, the founder’s son and the company’s president, told the magazine that its early years were dedicated to bringing high-quality Persian rugs to the American market, and that in the face of these geopolitical hurdles the company had to evolve.

New sources, named collections and a second generation in charge.

The search for new sources took Momeni across Asia. Rug Insider says the company explored India, Pakistan and China from the late 1970s and into the 1980s, and that China became a key partner. There Momeni launched its Sahara Collection, a hand-knotted wool line that the magazine says was inspired by Tabriz and Nain designs. By 2005 Rug News was describing Momeni as a manufacturer and importer of machine-made, hand-tufted and hand-knotted rugs, and said most of its rugs then came from India, China, Pakistan and Iran.

Named collections became the company’s calling cards. Rug Insider says the New Wave Collection launched in the early 1990s, followed soon after by the Maison Collection of European neoclassical designs. In the 2000s, the magazine says, rising labour costs and tariffs in China led Momeni to new partners, with India focused on handmade rugs and Turkey supplying machine-made products. The Rainbow Collection, made with Turkish manufacturers, used space-dyed polypropylene to give an abrash effect.

The business passed to a second generation. Rug News reported in 2005 that the founder’s younger sons were running Momeni, with Reza Momeni as president and Aria and Ali Momeni as corporate vice presidents, while Ahmad had turned to retail in Arizona. At that time the magazine placed the headquarters in New York, with a warehouse and shipping offices in Atlanta and showrooms in New York, High Point and Atlanta. It also noted that the company printed updated catalogues regularly and ran a website with a password-protected section for retailers.

Rug Insider says that in 2025 Reza still led day-to-day operations with Aria and Ali, and quotes Ali Momeni on the third generation’s role. It names third-generation family members in the business, including Katy Repetto as creative director and family members in special projects, broadloom and logistics. The magazine also reports an expanded warehouse in Georgia, and a broadloom division, launched with Ali Momeni, that focuses on couture qualities for designers and high-end retailers.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make or sell rugs and carpets for the home. Rug and carpet brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger flooring or furnishing groups, and a single name can cover hand-knotted, hand-tufted, flatwoven and machine-made pieces in wool, cotton, jute or synthetic fibre.

A rug brand’s identity is usually carried less by one design than by a name, a catalogue of patterns and the place or tradition those patterns point to, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its weaving elsewhere or grown far beyond the mill or showroom where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where and how its rugs are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its rugs are woven and how its collections have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family name, a founding story and a shelf of licensed collections.

Momeni’s identity is first a family name. The company has traded under the founder’s surname since 1975, and its anniversaries have been marked as family occasions: Rug News pictured the founder seated with his sons Ali, Reza and Aria for the 30th, and Rug Insider quoted Reza, Aria and Ali Momeni for the 50th. The founding story — the bales of Persian rugs sent to a student in Oklahoma, the small store in Austin, the move to New York — gives the brand a clear, retellable origin.

The second thread is change. Momeni began as an importer of Persian rugs, and the trade press records how it moved through China, India, Pakistan and Turkey as politics, tariffs and costs shifted. Its collection names trace that path, from the Tabriz- and Nain-inspired Sahara to the neoclassical Maison and the abrash-effect Rainbow. For a brand whose products are made in many countries, the named collection is a large part of the visual identity.

The third thread is licensing. Rug Insider lists Christiane Lemieux, The Novogratz, Erin Gates and Pure Salt as active licence partners in 2025, and the company’s website groups its rugs under those names alongside Momeni Basics, carpet and one-of-a-kind pieces. The magazine also mentions a children’s line, the Playground Collection, and a broadloom style called Arlo, hand-loomed from PET yarn.

For a design guide, Momeni shows how a rug importer can carry a family name and a founding story while letting designer collaborations and collection names do much of the visual work. Compare it with Safavieh, another Iranian-American rug family whose New York business dates from the 1970s, and Loloi. For this guide we use faded indigo, terracotta, sand and sage with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Momeni’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.