About Us

Early Days

Alan Falls grew up working in his parents’ cleaning & restoration company.  In 2014, Alan married Audrey and in 2015, she joined him in the family business.  In 2020, they launched their very own company, Distinctive Cleaning & Restoration.

At the start, Alan and Audrey offered in-home cleaning services.  But from the very beginning, their vision was to bring in-facility rug washing services to North Eastern Indiana.  When attending industry events and touring other cleaning companies around the country, Alan and Audrey realized this type of specialty cleaning service was thriving in other cities, but did not yet exist locally.  So, they set out to bring their vision to life!

Getting Started

In June 2020, a building at 2401 Pennsylvania St. was purchased.  Originally, it was built around 1950 and was home to David’s Carpet Cleaners.  This company cleaned carpet as well as oriental rugs but closed around 2000, so the building already had the perfect bones to be set up as a rug washing facility.  It already had critical installations such as a sloped wash floor, a trough drain, large water main pipes, availability for three-phase power and more.  Finding this building was like hitting the jackpot!

Steamatic Cleaning & Restoration closed in 2019 and auctioned off their equipment, Alan purchased a mechanical rug rack to hang rugs to dry overnight in a heated drying room.

So far, Alan and Audrey had completed about 2% of their vision, but it felt like they were on top of the world!  Next, the entire building needed updated and remodeled.  As with most DIY projects, it took a lot longer than expected.  For the next four years, Alan and Audrey would work at “the shop” (as they lovingly refer to it) on nights and weekends by themselves, sometimes with friends/family and sometimes with a variety of contractors, to transform the building into a state-of-the-art rug washing facility.  Some of the projects tackled included landscaping, demolition of existing walls and ceilings, new framing and walls, new plumbing and three-phase electrical, installation of the rug drying rack, a brand new studio space with a full kitchen, new concrete block to cover old windows, new doors, a new metal ceiling, ceiling fans, lots and lots of painting inside and out, and more.

Education & Experience

Alan and Audrey have always believed that “you can’t outperform your knowledge.”  Even though Alan had been cleaning rugs in homes for years and had attended various cleaning courses around the country, they knew they needed to update their skills.

In 2021, they both attended the Master Rug Cleaner course in Dallas, TX, learning from two of the industry’s most knowledgeable rug and textile cleaners.  A few important lessons learned in this course included rug identification, rug construction, the history of weaving and rug making around the world, identifying pre-existing conditions on all types of rugs, and how to safely clean all types of rugs from around the world.  They also learned how to set up a rug washing facility with the proper equipment and in a way that would make sense for their building.

In 2022, they spent a full week working with a very well-known and experienced rug cleaner to learn from him and his crew.  From the beginning of the cleaning process to the very end, they worked on many unique rugs, including many Navajo rugs, and learned much about identifying rugs correctly, color correction, rug repairs and finishing.  This week was a turning point as Alan and Audrey got to apply their knowledge on many real-world rugs and they fell in love with the process!

In 2022 and 2023, Alan and Audrey toured and even worked with many other rug washing facilities around the country in Detroit, Indianapolis, St. Louis, New York, even Canada, to see how their equipment was set up and how their process flowed.  This gave them so many ideas, tips and tricks on how to best set up their facility.

Equipment

At a certain point, it became apparent that to give the best cleaning results and to commit to scale into the future, Alan and Audrey would have to go “all in” on state-of-the-art rug washing equipment.  They found a manufacturer in the country of Turkey and collaborated with the production of custom rug washing machines.  At the end of 2022, they received four machines from overseas:  A 1,000 gallon wash tub, a rinse wringer machine, a 14-foot centrifuge and a ____ ft centrifuge.  It seemed like it was all coming together!

Vision Becomes Reality

Finally, the remodeling and the equipment installation was almost complete!  Not to mention, the choosing of a business name, creating a logo, a website, setting up workflow systems, etc.!  Toward the end of 2023, Alan and Audrey soft launched their rug washing services and began washing a few rugs each month for existing customers to ensure the process flowed smoothly.  It was a success!  After four years of hard work, now it was time to hard launch the new division – Distinctive Rug Cleaning!