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ENTREPRENEURS
- March 2001 by Claude Hammond Luxury Underfoot
“Thirty thousand rugs have already arrived,” Khazai said. “Fifty thousand more are on their way.” Edonia sells its rugs wholesale, retail and through its website, which has been online for only about three months. “Only a small percentage of the rugs we’ve sold have gone through the website,” Khazai stated. “But there’s a good indication for growth in that sector.” Throughout much of Edonia’s 20,000-s.f. Louisville warehouse, stacks and bundles of rugs are piled on top of one another. What doesn’t fit into the warehouse has been piled into the offices and hallways of the company’s administrative facility. “We have piles of rugs 17 feet high,” laughs Khazai. The www.edonia.com website currently has streaming video of daily specials on rugs. It also includes an illustrated database of available inventory of thousands of rugs, searchable by size, style, country of origin and color. However, the website is being expanded to include an online magazine on lifestyles, decorating and good living, as well as more business-oriented web functions aiding in rug financing and customer support. Edonia’s website has generated orders from sites as distant as New Zealand. During a recent interview in late February, Khazai and his staff were busy packing an order of 20 rugs that had been ordered through the website to a buyer in Mexico. Representing the newest generation of an ancient trade, Khazai has raised a few eyebrows among other rug merchants. However, his family are all involved in his Edonia venture. His brother works at the Louisville site and Khazai’s father serves as the firm’s buyer in Iran. “They are very excited about what we’re doing,” Khazai said. “They see that this is the future.” In an industry where 200 to 300 percent markups are not unusual, Khazai admits to markups being somewhere under 50 percent. “Anyone can afford an Oriental rug,” he said. “They are not just for the rich. We are just creating a more competitive marketplace.” One buyer was so enthusiastic about Khazai’s rug prices that he purchased a particularly large one to place in his garage – he planned on parking his Mercedes on it. But wouldn’t that ruin the rug? “You wouldn’t believe the durability of these rugs,” Khazai said. “The average life of an Oriental rug is 67 years, which is much longer than the life of a machine-made rug. The average handmade rug we sell has 180 knots per inch. Some of our more luxurious rugs have up to 600 knots per inch and will last at least 120 years.” Khazai’s rugs are mostly from Iran, though other rugs he sells come from Turkey, China, India and other countries. He has opened Oriental Rug Warehouse locations in Louisville and Lexington, with three more sites planned within the state to be opened by late 2002. In addition, Khazai’s Edonia Inc. is continuing software development specializing in real-time online rug sales. “We
want an inventory package that displays what’s on
sale at retail and wholesale locations all across the
country,” he said. “If something sells at their
site, the inventory package updates the location of the
product and immediately removes it from the website. This
would be a powerful sales tool for rug sellers and would
not cost us a dime in inventory, warehousing or data
processing. Other dealers have shown a great deal of
interest in this, so our goal is to get 200 users of this
inventory package. We’re looking for venture capital
to develop it further.” Claude
Hammond is editorial director of The Lane Report. |
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When David Khazai, a
fifth-generation Oriental rug merchant, talks about
selling carpets, he doesn’t just talk in terms of
retail space, but in terms of website traffic. The
Louisville businessman likes to think big. Since the
lifting of the U.S. embargo covering Iranian products,
Khazai has ordered 80,000 Oriental rugs for his exotic
carpet empire. Khazai’s businesses include Edonia
Inc., an online rug retail site; Oriental Rug Warehouse,
a growing retail outlet chain; and Mosaic Import, a
wholesale firm specializing in rugs.