The Oriental Carpet Buyer

I found this great post about how a sales trainer was convinced into buying a carpet while in Istanbul. It is a great example of the lengths that some shops will go to and of the techniques used by salesmen in general:
Owner: “Is there any price, where, if you could own this rug […]

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My son told me a story today. He was visiting Ephesus, the ancient Anatolian city near Selçuk, Turkey. There he met Jeyhan, a.k.a. “Jimmy”, who runs Jimmy’s Place, formerly the Artemis Guest House. Jimmy, who also sells carpets, had a great story to tell my son about how one of his customers was almost […]

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Art collector Rainer Kreissl who died in 2005 left behind him an unresolved argument. Should what most people call “oriental” carpets be called so? Here is the article in the Turkish Daily Times:
As he became an expert on Anatolian village rugs, and wrote about them, he urged Westerners to stop regarding Eastern weavings as “Oriental,” […]

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This video is a bit old, but in case you have not seen it, here is an advertisement for Persian carpets. I guess this is oriental carpet shopping in dreamland.

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(You can tell by the unnatural colors of the carpet that it doesn’t really matter if you spill on it.)

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Obama - he is a nomad, a constant traveler and a one-of-a-kind candidate. He would most likely go for an authentic Caucasian rug - not one made under the Russians - and it may look like this:

And Hillary would have to be a solid Bergama - more specifically a Yağcibedir - where the hard-working middle […]

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As you may have noticed, there are some pretty shabby Oriental rug websites on the Web. Looking around, you probably had little confidence in these companies since their url’s didn’t quite match up to their design. However, just as you should not judge a book by its cover, don’t judge the quality of a brand […]

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This is an article that we dug up from 1998 by Laura Billings for Salon.com: If there is something missing from the American Shopping Experience — and if you’ve been to the Mall of America, as I have, you know not much has been overlooked — it is the act of bargaining. Not buying a […]

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Desperate oriental rug stores have a history of advertising fake going-out-of-business sales. Here is an article from the Indianapolis Business Journal.

Phony going-out-of-business sales long have plagued Oriental rug retailing here and across the country, dealers say. The industry is susceptible because Oriental rugs can cost thousands of dollars, and many consumers lack the expertise to […]

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This is an excerpt from a book by Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy (available on Google Books). It is a perfect example of the problems that oriental carpet buyers face when making a decision on a carpet.

“The Expert Judge”
“[…] Expert judges in any field whether we’re talking about gymnastics, ice skating of dog shows […]

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