It All Started When…
Growing up in Allendale, New Jersey, Ali will tell you he was not only profoundly shaped by a love for his home state, but also by the time he spent as a kid helping out in his father’s rug store. “I’ve been in the home furnishings business my whole life,” he says, “I started sweeping floors in my dad’s store when I was 15, and slowly learned everything else from there.” As a child of immigrant parents who brought their rug export business from Pakistan to America in 1979, Ali was aware from a young age that it takes many skilled people working behind the scenes to properly craft a high quality product and make it available for the world to enjoy. After graduating college, he went to work in one of his dad’s rug stores, which also happened to be inside of a larger furniture store. Before long, Ali found himself fascinated by the day-to-day activities and constant traffic of the furniture side of things, and soon he was even taking classes in woodworking and metalworking himself: “I wanted to learn how to make furniture, and about industrial design.” While he admits he wasn’t very good at making furniture in the end, his interest made him “appreciate the craft that goes into it. It’s hard work, but when you look at a finished piece,” he says, “you don’t always see the people behind it.”