Carpet Industry in Coming Years: Trends and Future Prospects
Carpet weaving has always been the most famous and ancient heritage of India. It’s fascinating to know the ways in which the carpet weavers in India have mastered all the skills and expertise from diverse lands like Persian carpets online India, Afghanistan, and China. The carpet industry is no more a small business done in the isolated villages on a small scale rather it has carved an altogether different space, identity and appreciation for itself in the cosmopolitan world. These exquisite rugs now have both a domestic and a huge international market to supply. Despite all this history attached to the carpet industry, we as common people never really try to understand the importance of carpets in our lives. Forget aesthetics, we don’t even value the craftsmanship involved in making of these carpets. We fail to realize how enormous carpet industry has turned out in the last couple of decades.
Carpets are exported to more than 100 countries now, US holding the largest share, Germany being the second. If we look into the figures that India holds around 35% share of the world’s handmade carpets and around 90% of world’s machine-made carpets. every year there is a 14-20% growth rate in total business of carpets. This is absolutely amazing and places the carpet industry as one of the highest growth industry in exports and adds to a significant source of valuable foreign exchange.
Despite being one of the largest producer and exporter of carpets, there has been a decline in the demand of carpets in both India and overseas. We can access this change and attribute few reasons that might be the cause for this decline. There has been a shift in the whole carpet industry and one needs to access all of these changes that might direct us to the new trends and future prospects of the carpet industry in the coming years.
The carpet industry is going through a major change. The tradition is changing. From the time where rug weavers needed middlemen to sell their handmade rugs to the time where big industries were established producing all kinds of rugs to this very date where a new trend where every type of carpet is available for online retailing. All kinds of rugs are available online for people across the globe. This also facilitates the producer with a platform to directly sell carpets to the consumers. The carpet industry is both a labor-intensive and export-oriented industry. It provides employment to a large number of people so one hopes this new online retailing of carpets do not hamper the employment of those people. With India experiencing a booming e-commerce and home furnishing, one cannot accurately predict the future prospects of the carpet industry.
People over the time have developed a liking towards the “Machine-made” carpets and cotton based rugs which are more affordable and easily washable, unlike the expensive handmade rugs which are the real specimens of the art of weavers. On the other hand, there has been a growing fondness and appreciation for premium quality silk hand-woven carpets in overseas. This might be a new market for the producers to explore and cater to, where the traditional handmade carpets are not forgotten but are still produced and exported.
Therefore, in a nutshell, carpet industry will have to swing according to the consumer trends, online retailing, market for carpets seems segmented, and there is no traditional model of business to operate. Hand-tufted carpets are attracting a more new customer base. With all these changing trends, one needs to gauge the growing need of the customer, where carpets are customized according to customer’s taste, maintaining high quality and contemporary designs that go well with the current modern decors.
