Pulling The Rug Carpet Business Loses Footing In Wake Of Scandal, Competition
A bleary-eyed 6-year-old shackled to a sweat shop loom in the industrial ghetto of Lahore, Pakistan, is an image that makes rug seller Kathleen Alderman quake.
“When I heard about that boy, my heart was just broken,” said Alderman, manager of Pande Cameron, 1319 W. First. The April murder of Iqbal Masih, a 12-year-old Pakistani rug weaver turned child rights activist, still makes Alderman blanch.
“Chaining kids to looms is unethical. The enslavement aspect is what I find intolerable,” said Alderman, who was assured that the New York-based franchise buys only those rugs made by registered weavers age 14 and older.
The store’s ethical code eases the conscience of Alderman and consumers somewhat, but business at the Spokane store is still faltering. Corporate officials are making the store pull out of Spokane.
When Pande Cameron closes Tuesday, the store will join Pacific Rug Imports and Rosen/ Colgren Antiques in a select group: downtown rug importers that will be closed by mid-June for lack of business.
The ornamental rug industry, always a difficult market in which to succeed, is facing problems from many directions. Although not the cause of all those problems, the Pakistani murder has focused attention on the sometimes esoteric industry.
As customers and the public looked more closely, they found that the swiftly evolving industry is in the midst of a competitive shakedown, especially in small- to midsized markets like Spokane.
Before child labor abuses jumped back into the international consciousness, sparking protests in Europe and North America, technology was changing the fabric of the rug industry.
Electronic mail and faxes heighten competition by enabling small retailers to order directly from South Asian distributors. At the other end of the spectrum, department stores - which jumped into the market as the popularity of hand-made rugs soared - vacuum up more market share.
In the Inland Northwest, the rug trade burgeoned along with the local housing market and home-products industry. Now, as the housing market cools, so does the rug business.
But competition persists from all directions.
“Places like Boise, Missoula and the Tri-Cities, even Hamilton, Mont. - they all have rug dealers. Where Spokane maybe used to be a regional hub, now more small dealerships in the area have rugs,” said Richard Kirishian of Kirishian Oriental Rug Co. & Cleaning Services, 220 E. 2nd.
In this context, it’s hard to say what effect the Pakistani child’s murder has had on rug sales.
The closings of Pacific Rug Imports, Pande Cameron and Rosen/Colgren Antiques (closed last month) are merely coincidental, merchants say. But, at the least, the incident has changed the course of rug selling.
Merchants now spend more time convincing shoppers that not all rugs are made by children chained to looms, as Iqbal was from the time his parents sold him into slavery at four years old until he escaped six years later.
“More people are starting to ask if the rug was made in Pakistan by a child, and that may be a factor in whether they’ll buy a rug,” said Steve Harper, a salesman at Pacific Rug Imports.
Providing consumers with answers is often difficult, Harper said. He would like to reassure consumers, but it’s impossible to tell how old the weaver is by looking at a rug’s knots. (The perception that children tie the smallest knots is false, given the sophisticated tools of master weavers.
Even if a 6-year-old made the rug, he may have been weaving as part of a family cooperative - an arrangement salespeople say is no more cruel than American kids milking cows on the family farm. Other children weave at Asian convents led by British and Australian nuns in exchange for food and education, they say.
Another difficulty for salespeople is walking the line between mollifying consumers’ conscience and telling them the brutal truth: Child labor exists outside Pakistan and pervades the Third World from Colombia to Cambodia. So salespeople are hesitant to shun Pakistani rugs in favor of those made by children elsewhere.
“Someone will say, ‘I don’t feel good buying a rug from Pakistan,’ and they’ll buy a rug from China or India instead. There, you’ll only hear about isolated events (of child labor). It’s not across the board, but it does happen,” Kirishian said.
Other salespeople are less sympathetic. Child labor, they say, is an unfortunate fact of the rug industry - something too widespread for one person to stop.
“At least they give them a place to live and food to eat. In Pakistan, that’s a lot. It’s better than being sold into slavery,” said Mark Alanor, an Iranian immigrant who came here 13 years ago. He sells rugs at Pacific Rug Imports, 722 W. Riverside.
Alanor said his viewpoint is different from many salespeoples’ because of his Persian upbringing and travels to South Asia. He’s seen 10-year-old weavers better off than starving, 10-year-old beggars, and he takes umbrage with protesters who condemn Third-World nations for exploiting labor.
“It’s part of the American way to take advantage of one country after another. How different is this than taking advantage of different groups of people, like children?” he asked.
Regardless of the current political furor over rugs, Alanor and others said the industry as a whole will survive the controversy.
In fact, political controversy has been the rug trade’s only constant, from the U.S. economic embargo of Iran (which forbid American merchants from buying goods made by Iranian weavers) to the proposed Harkin-Brown bill (which bans the sale of merchandise made by children under 15).
Kirishian is confident that his store will survive the market downsizing. Still, he’s trying to ensure that downtown’s only remaining carpet importer doesn’t get the rug pulled from under him.
By diversifying his stock to include bronze statues, lamps and a wall-to-wall cleaning service, Kirishian - who inherited his 75-year-old business from his father, an Armenian weaver - hopes to outlast the competition.
“Contrary to what the public might believe, it’s not an extremely lucrative business,” Kirishian said. “But if you can provide people with a vision of what a rug can do for the home, you can spark interest.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo