It’s high end meets higher end in the world of rugs. Stark has acquired New York–based atelier Fort Street Studio. Fort Street’s team will remain on board following the transition. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Stark is no stranger to acquisitions, though the company purchases local dealerships and showrooms more frequently than other brands (the exception being a 2017 deal that saw the company merge its fabric business with Scalamandré’s). CEO Chad Stark says that the deal will allow Stark to clarify its offering to the highest tier of the market.

“We work with over 7,000 interior designers a year all over the country. [When we ask,] ‘What do you think of Stark?’ we can never consistently get that answer. We’re the highest of the high end in some markets, but in the highest end of markets, we’re not.” Fort Street Studio, says Stark, will act as a clear offering for the lucrative upmarket sector. “For many years, we’ve talked about and struggled with developing a curated selection of custom luxury products. So from a brand strategy standpoint, we said, ‘What better way to do this than acquire a brand that is known for the highest of the high end, that is known for custom [work], and make that our luxury brand within the portfolio?’”

Over the next year, Stark will be rolling out assortment and sampling for Fort Street Studio inside a handful of its own showrooms, and allowing its broader staff to sell the brand. The company also plans to move Fort Street’s Manhattan gallery, currently located in the Flatiron neighborhood, to a “more central location with other like-minded brands,” and introduce some Stark product into the mix.

Stark may also use its leverage with mills to improve delivery times and logistics, but the goal is not to tweak the Fort Street Studio formula from a creative or quality standpoint. “Our intent is to maintain the independence of what that brand stands for,” says Stark. “We expect to continue to invest in the product and communicate with clear terms the difference between our assortment and what makes Fort Street Studio so special.”

Fort Street Studio was founded by the husband-and-wife team Brad Davis and Janis Provisor. Both fine artists, the two took a sabbatical to China in the early 1990s and fell in love with silk weaving. A collaboration with a factory there produced striking watercolor-like patterns that became the basis for Fort Street’s debut collection.

Over the years, the company’s hand-knotted silk rugs became a fixture in the world of ultra-high-end design (its price point often went into six figures). Interestingly, Davis and Provisor originally explored distribution through Stark in the early days, but struggled to achieve liftoff through the partnership and instead pivoted to growing the business with their own brand and showroom. “We thought we had something very special; we saw it mixed in with a lot of other things and it didn’t sing,” Davis told host Dennis Scully on a 2019 episode of The Business of Home Podcast. “The only way we could really build this was to style it ourselves.”

In 2022, Davis and Provisor sold their business to the company’s longtime vice president, Paul Melo. At the time, an aging workforce had pushed Fort Street to shutter its factory in China—Melo helped introduce wool, hemp, nettle and linen into the palette and spearheaded a transition into India, Nepal and Thailand. Following the acquisition, Melo will remain on as creative and sales director.