From the Floor Up: Designing for reality – Home Accents Today

Celebrity designer Hilary Farr (top right) shows her new collection of rugs at Kaleen to Kathy Hank, owner of Rectangles rug store. Hank said her Northern Michigan shoppers are looking for rugged durability, ease of cleaning and style.

No doubt about it interior designers and decorators are on rug companies radars.

This seasons High Point Market buyer traffic, according to the High Point Market Authority, was 50% stocking dealers/retailers and 50% non-stocking dealers, comprised of designers, decorators, home stagers and architects.

Which means its very clear that regardless of their business model, rug suppliers across the board should be paying attention and tapping into this dominant customer segment.

Many already are by adding new customization services, curating collections, procuring one-of-a-kind products, opening design studio showrooms, and more.

But another key component to courting this different customer set is tailoring products and services to the localized specialty stores and showrooms that cater to this group, as I learned recently from Kathy Hank, owner of Rectangles, a rug store in Traverse City, Mich.

Working with the smaller mom-and-pop shops requires a specialized approach to business, she stressed.

Laser-focused on rugs, Rectangles 2,000-or-so SKUs cover a broad range of styles across its 2,000-square-foot store, from one-of-a-kind hand-knots to program-oriented machine-mades and almost everything in between.

That means Hank and her team of buyers/salespeople they all wear both hats work with a huge number of rug vendors. Many are the program companies, like Surya, Loloi, Jaipur, Capel, she told me. Others are strictly small niche vendors, not available online, etc. A few are primarily custom shops. Our goal is to always have a rug solution for any and all customers.

Equal partnerships with her suppliers are at the heart of success in the rug business, she said.

Rug vendors and retailers are on the same team. Sometimes that gets forgotten, she told me. Both parties should want to sell quality products across various price points to create happy repeat customers. When every decision made by both groups is made from this perspective, great things happen.

The main ingredient to that is a willingness from both parties to take the time to communicate and listen to one another, she continued.

Also critical, especially in serving designers and decorators, is sales-rep prep. Retailers and vendors alike should invest in educating their sales reps about the business model and the product so that the reps develop an instinct about products/programs that fit [into the assortment], and then bring that to a retailers attention. Then everyone customer, vendor and retailer wins.

Speaking from almost a decade of experience working with rug customers on finding the best product for their projects or homes, Hank said rug vendors should focus on designs for reality, not practical types of looks that translate into boring and ugly.

That means when developing new products, they should consider their target customers needs and wants. Northern Michigan, for example, has an active outdoor lifestyle, she said.

Kathy Hank, owner of Rectangles rug store in northern Michigan.

Across all age groups, were involved in agriculture, hiking, bicycling, tourism, wineries, breweries, boating, skiing and golf, to name a few, Hank explained. We need rugs constructed in a manner that will take heavy foot traffic, clean easily, are soft underfoot and play to a wide variety of individual style and color tastes and budgets. A tall order. We also need rugs that can complement existing furniture. Many people do not start with a completely clean slate when furnishing a room.

It also takes being flexible in response to trends in customer demand, which lately includes runners to add functional fashion to foyers and entryways.

These sizes are becoming more and more rare as vendors attempt to reduce inventory carrying costs, and I cant say as I blame them. But maybe they can they start including them but bump the price of a room size rug a bit to cover the foyer size loss, she offered.

Oriental Weavers is one of Rectangles rug vendors, company President Jonathan Witt told me.

We know we have to rethink and restructure how we handle that type of account base, because for sure, the smaller specialty stores are important to interior designers, he said. We are working on ways to grow that segment of our business.

Echoing that sentiment was Mike Riley, newly installed general manager of Karastan. He is working on plans to expand the upstairs brands product and service portfolios to appeal to a broader customer, both income- and age-wise.

We know we definitely have to sharpen our skills, he told me. We have loads of work to do to prepare for the [interior decorator and specialty store/showroom] customer.

Cecile B. Corral is a senior editor with Home Textiles Today and is editor of luxury textiles supplement POSH. She also covers the area rug category for Furniture Today and Home Accents Today.

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From the Floor Up: Designing for reality - Home Accents Today