Tufted rugs destroying rug business?

I'm in the exact same boat with yea, we are still buying and building for a better rug cleaning facility.
Im getting a half to a full dozen rugs a week to clean on accident in the nice areas I work in. But almost every custy tells me the same thing... "well you can take these to clean but these over here cost less to buy than you want to clean"

Unreal, some of these rugs are 10k or more but in the same house they have rugs that cost 200 bucks...
I'm offering to just do a "topical cleaning" on the cheapo's but I tell them up front it's not a good or thorough cleaning. They don't care.

Check this out, I realized this huge carpet cutting machine we have in the back of the shop can double as a rug wrapping machine! I just throw the rug on there and let it rotate it round and round while I run wrapping up and down. Makes it nice and tight! Maybe I'll get a video up if I get some time.

Your market should be fine but i would have a hard time finding enough customers
most of the "rugs" i come across are home depot/pottery barn types $500 at most

The vacuum store just closed in my home town. There are no more TV repair men. The lawn mower store only handles commerical mowers instead of residential.

Why?

Because its cheaper to go buy a new tv, vacuum or mower.

Personally, when it came time to for my wife and I to buy large area rugs, I went straight to Home Depot, I would never buy a wool rug. they are too much money, smell when they get wet, do not repel stains at all and most likely the biggest reason, is they are a pain to get clean and expensive. You gotta sent them away for weeks on end, they get lost(or so says the major rug cleaners reviews in my area)

I think you said it right about color. it was fine for my grandmom to buy a rug 50 years ago and walk on it until she moved to the retirement home, but the younger generation doesnt want something that same that long.

[MENTION=10492]jaymark1[/MENTION] It's those Freaking Walmart baztards! Burn Walmart to the ground!*

*Just freedom of speech, I don't condone arson of any Walmart.**

**kinda

You gotta take the good with the bad. We get all types of rugs from...at any given day our van can be carrying a $10,000 Tabriz alongside a $150 Pottery Barn area rug. We dont turn away any customers, we educate them on the cleaning process and if the rug does not have much monetary value but the customer still wants it cleaned we offer to clean them inside the house as a last resort. (only for the cheap rugs)

However, I have turned plenty of customers away because they did not want to pay to have their exotics taken out and cleaned properly...

On the flip side, people have paid us hundreds to have the same cheap rugs cleaned over and over. Never forget the emotions.

I clean lots of cheapos! Why? Because people like them and their dogs still pee on them and kids spill on them so I cleans em all!!! I leave it up to them to decide.

I see what you mean. It does hurt the market but especially for retailers. Then it streams down to us. At least they are easy to clean.

Look at this crap.



I don't get how they can harvest the raw materials transport to the plants, create the rug and then ship it all over the country to be sold for 100 bucks... Not to mention the store has to make profit on that. Jeez I miss high prices on good stuff and low prices on petrol.

I agree with what Sonny Cohen is saying about having to take the good with the bad. At my former place of employment one of the things we did when picking up a rug was to ask the customer for a "declaired value" and have that written on the invoice and signed by the customer. This did a couple of things for us, #1 it limits your liability should anything ever happen to the rug, and it prevents the$3000 rug form all of the sudden becoming a $20,000 rug (this is helpful if you ever have to file an insurance claim too).

#2 We would charge 10% of the rugs value to clean it. Of course we had a minimum, so a $100 rug would be a lot more than 10% of the vaue to clean. Personaly I think that the $2 to $4 per square foot price range is more of a fair way to price rug cleaning, but to each their own.

I agree that it sucks about all the cheapo rugs out there.

THATS COOL! I want one

This is all a matter of education.

I just posted a thread on what to look for when you are buying a rug - and most people have no idea what fiber, dye, or construction to look for because they just see colors and design.

We are turning away some rugs because of flawed merchandise (smelly tufted rug, these new poly shag rugs and wool shag rugs, and some custom rugs) - many have no idea why they should not have bought them, and with many poor quality tufted rugs, after washing them they require new latex and material (especially if they have had urine contamination or have been in a flood - you MUST immerse them to decontaminate...) so it adds $200 to the invoice. So even though they got a "deal" they end up paying more down the road than if they worked a little harder at getting a better deal on a true woven rug.

There are always going to be pure price shoppers. But if they bought wool, wool need to be washed. If they bought olefin, it is going to be uglier, and will get uglier faster and require more cleanings than if they had wool (wool is GREAT at hiding soil) - so they end up perhaps getting a cheaper cleaning with HWE - but they will do it more often in the time it takes for one wash of a good wool rug. It all evens out.

But customers who "like" their things will care for them, and that is the market to focus on. It may only be 10% of the market, but that's plenty who are seeking a specialist.

If anything, the bad rugs are showcasing even more so the value of buying true hand woven wool rugs.

Lisa