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Rug Insider Magazine
News for the Rug and Carpet Professional 
As anchors or accents, these forward floor fashions make us feel dizzy with excitement. Rugs featuring bold pattern or color, or unexpected moments and imagery help create unique personality-filled spaces. Dare to inject some drama—or whimsy—while still maintaining a sense of sophistication.
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.
With our hearts full of nostalgia we look to the past for guidance as we examine five areas of the industry which have undergone tremendous change over these past twenty-five years of RUG INSIDER Magazine. As for the next? Opportunity awaits.
It is somewhat serendipitous that this year marks both twenty-five years of RUG INSIDER and also the same quarter-century of my involvement in the hand-knotted rug and carpet trade. As a fresh, wide-eyed, rather green and unsophisticated rug salesman who knew not of the idiosyncratic nature of hand-knotted rugs nor their charms, entering the trade at the same time as this publication meant only one thing.
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?
The flashing backlit floors of the disco provided the inspiration for Collection 54 by Jan Kath. Light flashing off glittering mirror balls becomes contemporary rug art. Four patterns of fine lines are arranged to create interlocking grids that seem to vibrate and shine. Metallics and gem tones shimmer with shades of copper, gunmetal, silver, gold and emerald.
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.
I can hear the frozen droplets of water bouncing off the window outside as I type this article. Another reminder winter has not yet accepted it must eventually yield way to spring. Until such time occurs, we wait patiently for the new weather alteration to arrive. Four seasons of predictable patterns annually provide a gentle nudge on the shoulder for each of us; like it or not things are going to be very different soon.
It seems just yesterday the leaves were falling as we all began to bundle up nightly for the eventual temperature drop around here. Slowly our mind began to reconcile with our body, winter was marching toward us gaining more and more momentum each and every day. Instead of trying to resist the inevitable, we accept, prepare and pivot. And for the next three months, the frigid cold becomes our new norm. Snowy roads are a part of the scenery, and outdoor activities are altered accordingly.
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.
