New York, New York—Eric Lazarus, 30 years plus hospitality industry veteran has been named Vice President of Aperture Contract, the newest addition to the Charles Samelson, Inc. family of brands, focused on providing a collection of decorative roller shades for the commercial marketplace. Lazarus joined Aperture Contract in January after closing a 10-year-old hospitality bedding plant, Lazarus Mfg. which had morphed into a roller shade business in 2016. Mark Teppel, President of Samelson Chatelane recruited Lazarus for the new position and his timing couldn’t have been better. Lazarus brought Alma Peguero into the new business as operations manager. The two had worked together for 23 years. Peguero will work out of the Samelson office in New York while Lazarus will handle things from Plantation, Florida. “We needed another player on our team,” Teppel explains. He indicates that Lazarus will focus on roller shades but hell gradually get involved in other things within Samelson. “Lazarus’s background is in finished product. The New Aperture Contract line f 300 sku’s will be introduced at Hospitality Design Show in Las Vegas in May but the samples will not available to the Samelson sales force until June. Teppel expects to realize a $5 million business but Lazarus thinks it will be much larger due to the success of others already in it Like Valley Forge. “When Westin introduced the Heavenly Bed 19 years ago, many experts predicted that nobody would use it. Boy, were they wrong. The all white bed killed the print industry. Now I’m seeing the same thing happen to the drapery business,” Lazarus says