Hawaii Rugs styled with a floral tropics design

At a recent exhibition in Harrogate I stumbled upon an interesting floral rug design concept. While the design was by no means unique it did have hints of North American trends and the botanical essence of tropical Hawaii. The floral rugs designed with bold flowers much like the Hawaiian shirts and the colouring are subtly and tastefully contrasted to bring the tropics to your home. I can tell when good quality wool has been used to make a rug by the clarity of the yarn colour, cheaper yarn produces duller colours. The carving has been painstakingly etched by hand into the rug to bring floral rudiments of the design to life. As the rug is hand tufted the backing is jute.

It is difficult to say whether the rug would fall into the traditional or modern category, I think it just needs to be looked at as a rug that could look equally at home in modern or traditional surroundings. In the USA they would possibly describe the design as transitional which is a contemporary design with traditional elements.

The Hawaii rug is produced by hand in China under licence to a British Importer who is currently distributing on a very limited basis. The rug is produced in three sizes a medium sized 120cm x 180cm priced at around £200, a large sized 160 x 230cm priced at around £350 and an extra large 200cm x 290cm priced at around £480. Similar products available are Nourison Tropics Rug Collection but you can expect to pay a hefty premium for a similar design style.

Hand Made Wool Rugs

At rugzone.co.uk we understand that wool is the preferred fibre for many customers but with resent price escalations of the raw wool the cost of decent wool rugs has become prohibitively high. The majority of wool rugs sold in the United Kingdom are hand tufted in India or China and imported by wholesalers who transport the goods by sea in containers. The augmented costs of fuel have forced shippers worldwide to increase their transportation cost which in turn adds to the final price tag of the rug. Here in the UK we have not just had the escalating costs of raw material and oil. The chancellor also added his 2.5% to the end product by increasing Value Added Tax from 17.5% to 20%. Accepting the majority of home based products are going to cost us more this year than last is a foregone conclusion, it’s no wonder we’re becoming a little more diligent when searching for commodities.

Getting to grips with prices is the key to the majority of Internet based businesses, but sacrificing quality for price isn’t the answer. If the customer doesn’t perceive the products as good value or they will simply return them. So, it’s important to give the customer the best value that money can buy. This means being more astute than your competitors when choosing how and where to buy products like wool rugs.

With exports over $600 million India is the world’s third largest exporter of carpet and rugs the nucleus of which is Bhadohi, also known as Carpet City in the Uttar Predesh region of Northern India. This religion alone produces a massive 90% of India’s carpet and rug exports. You could imagine enormous factories employing thousands of people, but you would be wrong. In fact the rug weaving and tufting industry here is classified as a cottage industry, meaning there is an abundance of family homes and small workshops producing rugs and carpets in all shapes and sizes. The factories or export houses simply specify the designs and quality then finish the rugs, while the main production is contacted out to small workshops normally attached to the family home.

One way to achieve better prices on handmade wool rugs is to buy the rugs direct from the producers in India but you can’t just walk up and knock on someone’s door. Because it is cottage industry you would need to contract the labour of several families and you would have to know they were accomplished artisans. You would need to have the yarn pre-dyed and batched to maintain colour consistency, in the case of hand tufted rugs they would need to be backed and finished. There has to someone on the ground in India to co-ordinate the entire job from the raw material, to the finished goods loaded onto the container. So it is essential to find and work with an exporter you can trust to get the job done.

The new rugzone.co.uk wool rug collection is simply named “Bhadohi Cottage” in recognition of the cottage industry culture and the artisans of the Bhadohi region. The local wool and dyes are produced to the highest standard and the rugs has been finished by a trusted export house and imported by Rug Zone to ensure exceptional value.

I want a rug dot com

Encove Ltd has just launched iwantarug.com a brand new website for marketing and selling rugs. The challenge was to create a website that had the same low prices and fast dispatch as their highly rated Rugzone.co.uk website but enhancing the on-line experience by making it even easier to navigate.

The conventional way to search for a rug on a websites is to continually click through the endless categories of rug ranges hoping that you find the colour shape and size. Searching for rugs with iwantarug.com is very different to that of our competitors. We understand that customers generally don’t think of rugs by brand in the same way as they would say an electrical appliance. This means generic descriptions of rugs vague so searching using keywords is less effective.

At the iwantarug.com site you are not presented with a bank of categories; instead you simply narrow your search by selecting the shape of the rug you require. The next stage is to identify whether you want small rugs, medium rugs or large rugs, then the basic colour spectrum. In as little as three clicks your option are narrowed to just handful of rugs that should suit your requirements in shape, size, colour and of course price. Additionally there is a quick link on the description of the listing that when clicked will show you all other size and shape options in the selected colour and design.

Once you have selected your rugs, ordering is a simple process of completing your details and selecting your method of payment. You can pay with your credit card via our secure server or over the phone, if you have a PayPal or Goolge account you also have that payment option too. The delivery turnaround is fast, orders from stock paid for Monday to Friday before 2pm the rug should be delivered to your home the next working day.

All in all, the customer has the benefit of buying from one of the most experienced rug sellers on the Internet today.

Buying rugs to sell at competitive prices

The vast majority of Internet rug dealers build their business on the back of stocks held by wholesalers and importers. That is to say, they do not invest in stock; instead they simply lift photos from the rugs supplier catalogue and offer them on their web site. When the customer orders rugs from the website the retailer must then order the rugs from the wholesaler or importer, wait for the rugs to be delivered to their premises, then make arrangements to deliver to the end user, the customer. Not only is this method of selling costly to the end user it can take at best ten days to two weeks to process and deliver an order.

Any importer of rugs will tell you that transportation of goods is a major expense which inevitably has to be paid for by the end user. Because there is no mass production of rugs in the United Kingdom most machine made Wilton rugs are imported from Belgium, the Middle East or Turkey while handmade rugs are imported from India, Pakistan and China where labour is considerably cheaper. As rugs are generally bulky the burden of delivery charges can be a relatively high proportion of the end product price. A typical internet rug retailer who is operating using wholesale or importers stocks must additionally carry the weight of the operating costs and profit margins of his suppler plus the delivery costs to his door and also to the end user.

As a sole internet trader Rug Zone follows the principals of giving the consumer a combination of low prices rugs and fast delivery. Stock is stored and controlled in the main warehouse in Sunderland for same working day dispatch on orders processed before 2pm. Bulk purchasing it the key to the success of Rug Zone operation as buying rugs direct from manufactured by the container means lower prices can be negotiated with suppliers. Delivery and transportation costs are kept to an absolute minimum as the rugs are delivered direct from the factory to warehouse cutting out any middle men.

Ordering rugs in larger quantities also means Rug Zone has more control over the finished product. At Rug Zone the research and development team strive to bring rugs that are a little more unique, by creating rugs with new and diverse designs, rugs in larger size, shape and colour variation and with different textures to their competitors.

When a customer orders rugs on the Rug Zone website they usually get next working day delivery, exclusive designs and lower prices for superior qualities. Rug Zone do not sell rugs as an add-on to carpets or other products, they are dedicated to the business of providing rugs at a competitive price. Genuine savings of 30% or more can usually be achieved on like for like rugs with rugzone.co.uk