The Romance of Rugs

Cyrus Nazmiyal, Vice President of Rug & Kilim, represents the fourth generation of a family dedicated to a level of customer service rivaled only by the quality of the incredible products they produce. I’m sure no one from the Nazmiyal family would call their beautiful rugs products, instead recognizing each as an individual work of art. And that’s what makes these people so special. Often, the guy who makes the very best of whatever it is, is impossible to get ahold of, costs a fortune and takes a lifetime to achieve his results. The Nazmiyals make works of art, but they know how to sell them like they’re a pair of shoes at Saks.

If there’s one thing we’ve gotten from the 20th century department store it’s the idea that the customer is always right. As so much of our purchasing
has moved online, that classic shopping experience we’ve relied on to help
us buy with confidence has dissolved.We see something we think we love on some strange website, enter our private information in the allotted boxes and cross our fingers we haven’t been scammed. Most of us accept this for a tee-shirt but find the premise a lot more unsettling when we’re talking about a several thousand dollar rug. With Rug & Kilim, you never have to worry. Apart from their heavy investment in accurate photography and their general willingness to go any distance to ensure your satisfaction, they will create videos of the piece you intend to order and even let you try it in your space for several days with a full refund if it’s not exactly as you hoped. As a result, Cyrus says the company’s return rate is less than 1%.

This is where we get into the romance of a rug. There are new rugs that are commodities. You run to the store or sort through a few pages on Wayfair, you spend a couple hundred bucks and a rug of your choosing arrives in your home. Right away, you sense this isn’t going to be a lifelong relationship. This rug is machine made and starts shedding all over the place the second you begin interacting with it. Shortly after it’s stopped shedding, it starts to look a little dingy. You throw a party and someone spills red wine and you can’t get it out. It was fun while it lasted, but now it’s over. But, there are other new rugs. Rugs like those in Rug & Kilim’s Homage or Burano collections. They’re a little deeper. Years have gone into their creation. They began as just a vague idea, too, but where those other commodity rugs you’ve courted stopped short and were churned out for delivery, these kept on learning. Their designs are based on careful study of patterns from the last several hundred years, so there’s something very sincere about them. And yet, there’s something new and surprising too, like contemporary colors, or black yarns in the weft that peek through and portray a regal quality you can’t quite put your finger on. You bring one of these home with you. You throw a high stakes party, and this one doesn’t fuss, ‘cause it’s made of better stuff. You know then, this is just the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Sure, it may have cost a little more, but finding that one and only was totally worth it.

Apologies for departing on that Hallmark original, but if you’ll allow me to carry the analogy of rugs to people one step further, the most enticing people I know don’t really have to sell themselves at all. They are magnetic even if they aren’t the life of the party. If they are alone, they will appear exactly as they do standing in front of a sea of others. They do not need to pretend to be something more, because who they are is already so satisfying.

When I first met Cyrus, he told me about the importance of romancing the sale of a rug. Initially, my mind went to the old sales notion of wining and dining, but that’s not what he meant at all; that’s what the people selling commodities have to do. What I think Cyrus was saying is you need to tell the true story of a quality rug so a client knows the special journey involved in creating what they can already see plain as day. Romancing isn’t really about making them fall in love, which they probably already have, but more about affirming that love.