With a background in fashion and family roots in India, Arati Rao, founder of Tantuvi, has textiles in her blood. Arati worked in the world of corporate textiles for a time but felt disconnected from the process and those who were making the products. She quit that job and headed to India for about a year – traveling, learning, and discovering artisan communities. She returned to New York with deeper knowledge and renewed inspiration as she began working with an organization focused on fabrics, which eventually led to rugs. Now she has been designing rugs for over ten years. Read my interview with Arati below – we covered a lot in our conversation, from her early years building her brand to how she became one of the leading artisan rug brands in the market today.