Nourison sets China-made tufted broadloom carpets
By Lissa Wyman -- Furniture Today, February 5, 2007
New York — Nourison, the big rug importer, is entering the machine-tufted residential wool broadloom carpet business with a new 500,000-square-foot factory in China's Shandong Province.
Alex Peykar, a Nourison principal, said the venture is expected to double the company's business in three to five years.
The $20 million plant was completed in the fourth quarter of 2006 and will be in full production by the end of March. To service the U.S. market, Nourison is constructing a distribution facility in Calhoun, Ga.
Peykar said the company will offer wool broadloom "at prices we haven't seen in 20 to 30 years."The new lines will be in loop, cut-and-loop, random shear and Saxony constructions, and will retail for about $35 to $95 per square yard. He said Nourison will develop other patterns and textures.
Will machine-tufted rugs be part of the future? "The machine-tufting process is normally used for wall-to-wall carpeting, but we are looking into the possibilities," said Peykar.
Five years ago, Nourison entered the broadloom business with machine-woven carpeting made in China. "The tufting process is approximately eight times faster than the weaving process," he said. "And because we do our own spinning and dyeing, we are able to bring wool carpets to the market at a very affordable price."
Peykar said Nourison is not planning to compete directly with the giant U.S. broadloom tufting mills. "However, over the past 20 years or so, synthetic yarns have taken over domestic broadloom manufacturing, leaving a gap in the market for affordably priced wool broadloom," he said.
"Increases in the price of petroleum-based products has caused the prices of synthetic yarns to skyrocket," he added, "while increases in the price of wool have been modest in the past few years."
The new broadloom is being introduced at winter markets in Hanover, Germany, Atlanta and Las Vegas, including the furniture market and the Surfaces show.
