The Oriental Carpet Buyer

My friend Ismael, owner of SoHo’s Beyond the Bosphorus carpet store has finally decided that it is about time to get a web site and can now be found at BeyondtheBosphorus.com . His web site needs a little work still, but I guess it’s a start, right?

We have officially formed a partnership, whereby Carpet on […]

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This is a great episode of The Chasers War on Everything (an Australian show) where they go to visit Oriental carpet dealers who ARE NOT having clearance sales and ask them to put signs up saying that they are. The best part is when one of the owners says that he does not wish to […]

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This is a video that I just noticed on YouTube. It is by Turkish Airlines, featuring my good friend, Ismael, who owns Beyond the Bosphorus in SoHo. It was done quite a while ago, but was only recently posted. It is a must-see for its comedic value. So funny.
What is interesting to note is Ismael’s […]

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I found this on travel writer Dave Fox’s site:
After nearly three months of travel, alone, on a ridiculously tight budget, I was sick of being politically correct. I had been ripped off – twice in two hours. And not knowing what else to do, I blamed the Turks. I blamed the entire country because in […]

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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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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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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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We saw this on a carpet store in the Grand Bazaar, on Halicilar Caddesi.

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