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Rug Insider Magazine
News for the Rug and Carpet Professional 
If there’s one thing everyone in the industry wants to know, it’s what styles and colors are trending this year. However, that’s not always an easy thing to pinpoint.
Luckily, interior designers offer a direct line to consumer’s wants and needs in terms of styles and trends, and their knowledge can help manufacturers create products that consumers are asking for.
In the early Fall of 2020 Rug Insider Magazine produced an experimental online virtual showing of rugs and carpets titled “Under the Rug.” As an extension of the walking tours I had previously given during prior installments of The Rug Show, it was as much “fill the void caused by cancelled shows” as it was learning experience—a veritable laboratory of presentation concepts and commentary. For those who missed it as it was aired, an archive of the entirety of the show can be found on Rug Insider’s Instagram account, @ruginsider.
Within the wide world of oriental rugs, one could rightly say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as each person has their own criteria as to what makes one type of rug more beautiful or desirable than another.
Is a rug’s beauty defined by the intricacy of its design, with the most intricate designs being the best? By the fineness of its weave, with the finest weave being the best? By the richness of its color palette, with the brightest and most colorful being the best?
From the day we arrive on the planet, and, blinking, step into the sun, there’s more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done, there’s far too much to take in here, more to find than can ever be found, but the sun rolling high, through the sapphire sky, keeps great and small on the endless round.
Manufacturers and suppliers of area rugs find themselves in a dilemma with no definitive solution in sight.
Consumer demand for area rugs is at an all-time high, prompted by the pandemic’s push to home-bound people and equip them with government-issued stimulus checks they’ve largely opted to spend on their home decor.
Amidst unprecedented global change and disruption one firm caught the attention of RUG INSIDER Magazine due to its ability to seemingly have been prepared for the eventualities of 2020 and beyond.
The history of the trade of rugs and carpets is a long and storied affair. One steeped in both tradition as well as innovation. Be it design, materials, construction technique, manner of distribution, or the like, traders have embraced tradition—along with novelty, expedience, and the technology of the era—to advance the fortunes (and perhaps misfortunes) of the craft and trade.
International Market Centers puts COVID-19 safety protocols in place that leave manufacturers optimistic about the future of markets.
It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since COVID-19 shut down the United States. Remember how businesses everywhere started panicking about how it would play out?
Many in the industry expected sales to be down 30-40 percent in 2020, but that was not the case. Retailers and manufacturers across the country benefited from the number of people forced to stay home and furnish their homes.
There is a saying that one cannot know the future without first studying the past. This has been a recurring theme over the past several issues of RUG INSIDER Magazine; how we can learn from the past of the rug trade, and how it can help us foresee what the industry’s future holds. In the rug business, particularly in the vintage and antique rug sector, while the carpet dealers were traditionally the main purveyors of fine rugs to the buying public, another important area has long been that of auctions.
