What can I do with E-Mail?

As I write this Hanukah starts in 13 days, Thanksgiving is in 15 days and Christmas is in 41 days. So what does that have to do with Oriental Rugs and Rug Washing? I will tell you what, it is about money. Holidays are a time of parties, family meals, visiting loved ones and company. Think to yourself if you have friends and family coming over for Thanksgiving Dinner what do you want them to smell when they walk into your home the turkey or the cat?

Pet odor is a major problem especially since over 80% of all rugs coming in to be cleaned have some pet contamination. It is also a wonderfully profitable problem. Customers bring you problems, you provide solutions and they give you money.

But unless you take action some of your customers will forget to get the rugs done. Unless you take action some of them will wish they had gotten their problem rugs cleaned. Unless you take action some of them will even roll up the problem and stick it in the basement or garage until their company leaves. You customer faces shame, embarrassment, or inconvenience but you have a worse problem; you lose the opportunity to have your customer give you money.

One solution is email marketing. By collecting emails it gives us an easy inexpensive way to remind or customers that as of today there are only 40 days left to get their rugs cleaned.  Actually it would have been better if you had done that a month ago but there is always next year.

There are all the major holidays but there are other events you could email your customers. In most of the country moths lay their eggs in May or June that would be a perfect reason to send out a warning message. A spring cleaning message reminding people that rug wear is primarily from dry particulate soil abrasion in the foundation. Summer vacation is a great time to take rugs out for cleaning. Fall is the annual start of the rug season. The list goes on and is as big as your imagination.

USPS Mail is so expensive and even post cards for rug washers are so 1995. I mean really Postcards are as old fashioned as Bronze Silver Gold pricing packages. It is time to focus on email and get set for text messages as well.

Business Image and Brand

Does your business agree with your vision and is either in line with your mission statement. If your goal as a Rug Washer is to be a Hack or a Second-Rater then stop reading this article. Anything you do or don’t do does not really matter. But if you want to run a high end Rug Washing Boutique then you need to take a serious look at everything you are doing.

Do you have a location where customers can pick up and drop off their rugs? Take a critical look does your business has curb appeal? Now obviously we are not trying to flip houses but what does your customer see when they pull up? Here are some basic questions:

Is your property clean, orderly, and in good repair?

Do you have that rusty car you mean to get running one of these days?

Is their scrap, junk, or clutter in the view of customers when they bring their rugs to you?

Are their weeds growing up between the sidewalk or drive and the building?

Is the building painted and in good repair?

Luv-A-Rug Services 250-590-6210

I think you get the idea. You are selling cleaning and your services to put things in their proper order. I know you are swamped and you are meaning to get to it but your building is where you say who you are and a junky cluttered mess in need of care is the wrong message. The better it looks the better you look and if you are building your high end Rug Washing Boutique you need every edge that you can get. Clean it, fix it, paint it, and get it done.

Now my eyes are not that good any more so how easy it to find your place? We are not dealing with maps and pictures on the web here I am speaking about signage. Can I see your business easily driving by? Maybe you have good eyes and you can see that 1 by 2 foot sign in the window from a block away but ask yourself are customers over 50 important to your business and your future? Make it easy to find you. Also you need to keep your exterior display changing. Sign boards work well for many people. Can you dry or dust rugs where it is visible from the street? Any sort of activity draws attention. If you can keep some aspect of your signage changing every 10 days it will be far more effective.

From the front door to the counter or whatever apply the same sort of examination inside that we just covered for outside. But clean and orderly is just the beginning; Does your interior say “Rug Expert” or Hack. What about your interior says Rugs to the newcomer? Do you have any rugs on display? Some display rugs, tribal trappings, maps of the weaving areas and novelties like a miniature Navajo loom helps create an image that draws your customer in. Rug book and a magazine such as "Carpet Collector" attract customer interest and these things build your image as a Rug Expert. Dirty, smelly soiled rugs don’t look good or smell good. Don’t keep piles of rugs in your display and selling area. Keep moving them to the back. I think it is best keep the display and selling area separate from the cleaning area but I do believe in welcoming customers to visit your cleaning area anytime they want. Now that I think about it why not invite everyone to see you clean. Getting the local 5^th grade class to stop by and see a display of chemistry in action could send 20 or 30 little sales people home to tell their parents about what they saw.  

These is just the start but take what I have given you and see how it applies to your business. To some of you this is old hat but to some of you the ideas here can make your business far more profitable. 

MORE by Barry O'Connell

My new Wednesday Night video talk show is called “MORE”. It is dedicated to the concept of MORE. More on rugs, More on top quality rug cleaning, More on building your business and More on Authority Marketing. For our target audience it is about the Three Ms; MAKEING MORE MONEY!

I loved the old Wednesday night program that Dusty, Paul, Nathan and others had fashioned. But in many ways it had its limitations. There were too many rules.  Dan Dahlion saw the program as a profit making opportunity for him. That is fine since PCN is his, but we missed many guests because Danno wanted $175 to $300 from guests to be on the show. But I wanted something MORE. My goal is to put the Rugs and the Rug washers first. I want to be able to pick topics and invite guests solely on the basis of what is best for the audience.

With that in mind I created my own show where I can do what I want when I want. Reaching back to the early days on PCN I was excited to get D. Scott Kentfield to come on and help get the show started. Because the Google platform is much more richly featured and stable we can much more with videos. With PCN we had to save videos at the lowest possible resolution just to play on PCN and even then it was hit or miss. Now we can play any video on YouTube or just about anywhere else.  We will also have much better slide presentations. With PCN we could only use less than half of the screen so resolution was a big problem and the speaker running the slides could only see parts of his own presentation. By going to a two hour show we can split things up and cover a wider range of guests and topics.

Las Vegas RugLover Tour a big Success

The Tour was the best so far. The turnout was very good and we really made a great group of participants. I don’t have a list of attendees but some of them were: Michael Mull, Amador Padron, Brian Jesperson, John Restivo, Joe Roberts, Timothy Kilman, Ruth Durot, Ruth Travis, Michael Flynn, Paul Lucas, Nathan Koets, Kirk Siddens, Ivan Turner, David Bennion, Scott Warrington, Tom Forsythe, Brian and Kelly Ritchie, Brian S. Ritchie, Brian K. Ritchie, Rocio Ritchie, Mario DiGiovanni, Thomas King, Brandon Padron, Cory McCook, Randal Halvorson, Larry and Cathy Snyder, Joe Bartz. Cameron Mayville, Mark Baldwin, Scott Arkon, Con Schultz, Rod and Jackie McGeorge, Michael Brummett, Alex Flores, James Takacs, Dave Gerke, Paul and Linda Schleuniger, Debbie Penny. Jan Sandler, Doug and Amanda Moerschbacher, Howard Partridge, Dusty Roberts, Clark and Linda Lancaster, Ike Maddox, Scott Powell, Bill and Jean Pinckard and family, Mark Ehrlich, Khosrow Noury and Azita Aghanoury, Shawn Bisailion Rob Decker, Cynthia, Michael Schmitt, Stephen Esau, Johnny Sheridan, Brian Simpson, Todd Almer Jr., Michael Flynn, Doug Heiferman, Steve Moran as well as a number of others.

Barry O'Connell's 2013 Las Vegas RugLovers Tour

Barry O'Connell's 2013 Las Vegas RugLovers Tour

The most important rug event of the year

September 2nd we open the 2013 Vegas RugLoversTour. It was originally planned to be a 2 day event just before the opening ofThe EXPERIENCE TRADE SHOW & CONVENTION. But since many of our participants were staying through the conventionup to Howard Partridge’s event on Saturday we decided to continue the RugLoversTour Monday through Friday AT NO ADDITIONAL COST to the participants.  

Guaranteed to be Phenomenal with Howard Partridge speaking on Rugs.

The Rug Gallery Tour

A RugLovers Tour would not be complete without a private tour of a Rug Gallery.

This time we have made arrangements with NW Galleries of Las Vegas – a 16,000 sq ft. rug gallery containing over 3000 area rugs of all descriptions.

During our time at NW Galleries you can expect to learn about…

·         Review of dozens of different types of rugs, from the low end tufted to synthetic rugs, from sea grass all the way up to fabulous hand woven antiques worth 10′s of thousands of dollars

·         Advanced rug identification

·         Rug prescriptions for the challenge modern rugs that can go bad very quickly

·         Custom matching rugs with the appropriate cleaning process

·         How to charge a higher price for cleaning than your competition and still get your client’s approval and smile

Great teachers Like Doug Heiferman center with tie at the last Tour

The Seminars

.

·         How To Make More Money Cleaning Less Rugs. This unique presentation will introduce you to the incredible money making power behind pre-inspections.

·         Putting Your Dream to the Test: The 10 questions that will help you to see it and then seize it. Most people fail to realize their potential because their dream remains hypothetical. Put Your Dream To the Test takes your dream from ethereal to achievable. Learn how to crystallize your vision and galvanize your commitment.

·         The 500 Club. This is your opportunity to learn ALL the secrets of their success. They’ll be conducting small group sessions to reveal the step-by-step methods they used so you can duplicate their results for yourself.

·         Marketing sessions with Stephen “Dusty” Roberts and Barry O’Connell. Discover the marketing secrets Dusty Roberts developed over a 10 year period that you can use to DOMINATE the area rug cleaning market in your city – NO MATTER who your competition is.

·         HOW TO safely deal with rugs that bleed like stuck pigs and HOW TO simply remove pet urine from any rug without damaging it.

·         Hands-on rug identification.

·         Rug prescriptions for the challenge modern rugs that can go bad very quickly.

·         Match Game: Which cleaning process works best for which rug?

·         How to charge a higher price for cleaning than your competition and still get your client’s approval and smile.

·         How to set up a profitable low budget rug cleaning facility WITHOUT using any expensive equipment.

·         The secrets of how Bill Pinckard became the #1 rug care expert in Las Vegas after building it from the ashes of his failed restoration company.

NEW EXTENDED PROGRAM!

We have EXTENDED the Barry O’Connell Vegas RugLovers program from a 2 day event to an “optional” 5 day event and it won’t cost you a dime more!

No kidding, the “official” days are for the 2 and 3 of September and it is chock full of powerful speakers and lessons that will make you more money.

BUT now we’ve added a full range of speakers to the RugBadger “hands-on, boots-on” (HOBO) rug washing presentation area of “The Experience” Trade Show.

The GREAT news is that attending “The Experience” Trade Show costs you nothing and we have a full list of powerful speakers and presentations for every hour of the tradeshow!

Check out this list of speakers and presentations we have lined up for extended RugLovers Tour at “The Experience” RugBadger rug washing pavilion!

More Programs and Classes and Great Cleaners like Cathan Koets

§  Howard Partridge – Marketing

§  Ivan Turner – Marketing

§  Doug Heiferman – Using a Brush Pro in a pit full of water safely

§  Doug Heiferman – Bleeders

§  Doug Heiferman – Wool Protector for Fun and Profit

§  Randal Halvorson and Nathan Koets – Fire damaged Rugs

§  Jan Sandler – Problem Solving as a Marketing Tool

§  Nathan Koets – Advanced Centrifuge Technique

§  Shawn Bisaillon – To be announced

§  Ruth Travis – To be announced

§  Nathan Koets and Paul Lucas – Making Fringe look Amazing

§  Doug Moerschbacher – Smart Rug Washing

 So there you have it. An extended program and it’s all at the same hotel with the same great rate.

Come for the RugLovers Tour
but stay for The Experience!

Questions about the Vegas RugLovers Tour

+Stepen Dusty Roberts received an email about the Las Vegas RugLovers Tour with some very good questions. So I decided to share it with you. My answers are in bold italics:

There are probably a few reasons I haven't signed up (yet). First of all, this seminar sounds great to me.  I love the idea that I could possibly just and only do area rugs one day and not run out in my van and do wall to wall carpet every day and the occasional area rug. It sounds a little too good to be true.  I do know that there are a couple of "big" guys in town that only clean rugs, so the idea of tapping into this carpet seems like a possibility yet not that easy.

This part is pretty simple. You are in a major metropolitan area with a long history of rug sales and cleaning. The biggest in town is a retail Rug store with a MOR (automated) Plant. They seem to be good people with a great reputation. That makes them ideal competition. Automated plants do a mediocre to good job of cleaning but a serious hand washing rug spa should be able to do a much better job. The key part is if there are “a couple of "big" guys in town” that means that there is a good market and by great cleaning and strong marketing you can carve out a nice niche.

I keep wondering how much money people are making.  There’s never any mention about how much people are actually making.  All I ever see is "thousands".  How much are people making per month, year?  Or, how much should one make per month depending on size of their operation, experience and so forth. I mention how much I should be charging to actual clients and the process involved and they actually cringe.  I'm getting older, and the idea of having a shop and only cleaning rugs is quite appealing as age creeps up on me.

One guy who was a carpet cleaner was doing about 40K when he got involved with us. In less than 3 years he grew it to $250,000. He was getting too busy so he raised his prices across the board on everything by $1. So he went from $3 per square foot to $4 per square. Instead of slowing down the price increase increased the number of rugs in the door instead of decreased it. Now he is on track for $400K this year with just him and his wife and their son as a part timer.

Other cleaners who get seriously involved have had similar results and we are glad to introduce you to the guys and you can ask them what it has done for them.

Any insight you have is great.

Some of my reasons.....

I have a 4 month old baby, I'm only working part-time right now, the total cost of class, trip, flight from Atlanta, room, food blah blah adds up, time off of work. So basically making all my stars align is key right now.  I also know that the price can go up at any minute for the class.

So these are a few reasons that I haven't jumped on it, although I find it very interesting and would love to learn more.

Rugs are cool.

 :-)

If you want a vacation to Las Vegas there are cheaper ways to do it then this. Our Tour is for people who are serious about attending EVERY session taking notes and PAYING ATTENTION.  Plus the time in-between and around the sessions are not free time they are networking time. The social interaction is crucial. You need a network of seasoned pros that have been through the same problems that you are facing. Also we tend to hit the bar after dinner and talk shop. Nobody cares what you drink, I usually drink Diet Coke. We have had Mormons on the tour and if you want milk, juice, or water nobody cares. Our bar time is about networking not drinking.

Oxidation for Cleaning Urine in Wool and Silk

Oxidation for Cleaning Urine in Wool and Silk

Oxidation works best on proteins. Urine can contain protein but the real cleaning problem is urine salt crystals. It is the off gassing from the urine crystals that stink. With enough work, flow, and time water will dissolve urine salt crystals. But acid does it faster and better. Wool in its natural state is slightly acidic and urine salt is alkaline. Dyes can be destabilized by alkalinity and acid helps to reverse that damage. So you can use a vegetal acid such as vinegar or in its stronger form glacial acetic acid or you can use a more stable and longer lasting mineral acid. Urine pretreatments use mineral acid as their main ingredient.

The other consideration is that oxidizers work best on proteins but wool and silk are protein based fibers. All oxidizers are long term bad for wool and silk. In moderation the damage is minimal. But the best advice that I know is that oxidizers should be used only on wool and silk when there is no other remedy and when they are used should be in low concentration. About the only oxidizer I normally use is 3% Peroxide for blood and protein stains. I would rather apply it a few times then over use an oxidizer once. If I had to clean a crime scene Oriental Rug soaked in blood I would likely go to one of the other oxidizers mentioned. But I never got one and doubt I will.

18 years of work is not enough!

18 years of work is not enough!

For 18 years I have been online on the Internet helping people to grasp Rug ID. Everything from message boards to videos to FaceBook to live seminars. Recently I heard someone knocking my 18 years of work as not enough. Forget the fact that the vast majority has been given to all mankind for free they felt it was not enough. That is OK, I still love them and am not offended. But it made me realize that maybe I need to pull together all the resources to make them easier to use.  I also realized that since I never tried to monetize my Rug ID help I never even signed much of it. I am not in this for glory or for thanks, I just want to help people so since my critics felt I did not do enough I would do a little more.

To help identify the Rug ID resources I created a NEW BLOG called RUGLOVER ID. It will take time to post everything but as I post I see it as a learning tool for all my friends.

Thanks,

Barry O’Connell

http://rugloverid.blogspot.com/

DC RugLovers Tour 2013 Rug ID is the Key to Marketing

Rug ID is the Key to Marketing

The more you know about Oriental Rugs the more your clients will trust you. That is why on the DC RugLoversTour we spend a day in Herat Oriental Rugs warehouse in Alexandria Virginia.

The DC RugLovers Tour 2013

Washing Rugs and Making More Money

Tufted, Hand Tufted, Gun Tufted, its all the same thing.

Earlier I was in a discussion about urine soaked tufted rugs.  It reminded me of a few points. Tufted rugs are a fact of life. But the more you know about rugs the better quality of rugs you will get to clean. The more Rug ID you know the more people will trust you with better rugs. But charge the same for tufted and machine made rugs as you do for hand woven Persian rugs. Among the other crap rugs you have a greater risk with rugs like rayon rugs. Why not charge more for them. In fact with the rugs Lisa Wagner calls “Rugs To Run From” you may as well charge for the risk and aggravation if you are going to clean them at all. People will pay more to clean a silk rug so why not the junk rugs. Quit discounting the crap rugs it only encourages more crap rugs.

A Rug Washers Best Friend

Then there is the delicate subject of urine soaked rugs. You should thank God for all those piss rugs. If it was not for urine this would be a much tougher business to make a buck in. Next time you smell that smell just tell yourself that is the smell of money. 80% of all rugs coming into most shops have pet contamination. That is a lot of rugs.

Now a little thought about money. You lose money on the first rug you wash every month and you lose money until you hit break even.  Don’t forget to calculate your pay in the break even calculation. You could lose money cleaning rugs at $50 a square foot if you only get one or two. Rent, water, chemicals, equipment, light, heat, etc… all have to be paid before you make your first dollar each month.  If you want to make more money then all you have to do is wash more rugs. How? We call that marketing.  If you need help on marketing call Dusty aboutRugLover Marketing or about the RugLover tours.  It is no silver bullet but if you do the work you make money far easier than you ever imagined. 

Easy Money or do you make things difficult?

We all want Easy Money don’t we? Then why do we make it difficult for people to give us money. I went into a Chinese Restaurant in Seattle and since I was on a low carb diet I ordered the beef and asparagus special. Then I said no rice please just add some extra asparagus. The owner told me NO She Couldn’t Do That. What she really meant was that she could not or would not do that at the same price but I never mentioned price. I looked at her and said, “You have food, I have money, so all you have to do is tell me what it costs and then make it.”  The confused look passed from her face and said "Two dollar more". Then she made me a great dinner. Think about it, I walk in as a paying customer and she refuses my order. I understand why but does it really make sense. We all do things that make it more difficult for our customers to give us money.

Don’t Assume I Known What You Do

My friend Stephen Dusty Roberts cleans rugs. His business is called Luv-A-Rug and when you go in it has rugs all over the place. Dusty also cleans Boat Sails but it is a small part of his business. One day one of his long time established Sail customers told Dusty, “I didn't know you did rugs too”. This man made checks out to Luv-A-Rug not Luv-A-Sail but it completely escaped him for years. We may think it was obvious and he should have known but here is a bigger question; how much money did Dusty lose by not telling him “hey, we do rugs too”.

Make It Easy To Call You

One of the things that drives me crazy it hiding your phone number on your website. I am not going to embarrass my friends by naming names but many of you don’t have easy websites. Your phone numbers should be at the top of the main page. It should also be at the bottom of every page with your address. If I have to search for a contact page you probably lost my business. But worst of all is if I get to the Contact page and all I get is a form for on-line response screw it I am going to your competition. Seriously I am not twenty something; I am old enough that I watched prime time in Black and White I have no interest in filling out your online form and no it is not damn likely I want to Chat either. On-Line forms are OK for some customers but offer a phone number and address for the rest of us.

Make Your Website a Good Experience

Tell me your name. I assume that if you do not say who you are you are either stupid or hiding something. Maybe I am a cranky old man but can you really afford to write off all the business from cranky old people.

Make sure it loads fast

Not everyone has a hot cable modem like your web guy has. I do not care about your pictures and graphics if the page is slow. Many of us go to our second choice when  the pages are slow. Keep in mind bargain basement hosting companies can be very slow. Don’t assume, test it yourself and also ask your customers what they think about your website.

Don’t Be a Wiseguy

I regularly run into businesses where the first person (and often the last) is more interested in being a wiseguy then in finding out my problem and making it easy for me to give him money.

Don't Scold Me

I walk into some businesses and instead of welcoming me they scold me. I don’t care if I came in the wrong door or put my rug in the wrong place or that it is closing time or anything else you want to scold me about. You are not my mother.  I am there to give you money. You are there to take my money. That is your job and it should be your goal. When I used to help out at Mark Keshishian & Sons a busy Chevy Chase MD Rug Store and Rug Cleaning company we used to watch the parking lot and as soon as somebody made a move to get something from their trunk or backseat we assumed they had a rug to come in and we went to help them.

If I Call I am Not Taking a Survey

If I call assume it is because I have a problem. If I start by asking the price it is only because I do not know what to say. Your job is to find out why I really called and offer a solution. We deal with this in detail in RugLover Marketing.

I will probably think of more of the stupid business tricks people do and I will let you know about them. Some people completely miss how difficult they make it for people to give them money. I know one west coast rug cleaner who trash talks his customers to anyone who would listen. To hear him talk his customers are stupid eBay pickers who bothered him about rugs. He is argumentative, arrogant and rude. I will grant he has a reputation for great technical skills but I know the rug biz was so rough that he went out and bought a Truck Mount so he could do in home carpet cleaning. Doing great work is not the way to make money in the Rug Washing business; it is just the first step. 

How easy do you make it for people to give you money?

The Value of the Rug Hub

When you need advice on Rug Cleaning the Rug Hub group on FaceBook is a great resource. Just this morning I saw a question and answer:

Victor M. Franco asked: 
How do you clean hemp rugs?

Paul Lucas replied: 
 Hi Victor.  I will give you a quick "how to" list; 
#1 inspect for browning, shrinkage, weak structural integrity, water marks.
 #2 Have release form signed. #3 dust or vacuum. 
#4 apply diluted Rug Soure solution front and back. 
#5 apply Sublime solvent (if heavy soil) from and back. 
#6 Shampoo with Cotton Rug Shampoo, front and back.
 #7 Rinse with Cotton Rug Rinse and cold water. 
#8 Extract or centrifuge to remover all possible water. 
#9 Flat dry face down with air movers blowing across back. 
#10 Optional - After rug is dry, Tea Dye to even out the final look. Hope this helps.

The feeling of brotherhood is very apparent in the Rug Hub. Men and women coming together to help each other, I am glad to be a part of it.

• 
  

Rug Lover Tour DC 2013

Barry O’Connell’s Rug Lover Tour DC 2013

Group Shot from the Pittsburgh RugTour

This year we are offering something very special: The RugLover 500% Club with Anthony Belmonte, Jan Sandler, Doug Moerschbacher and the guys from Glyndon Lord Baltimore. All 4 businesses have had explosive success of about 500% or more. All four are fairly recent start-ups and all are off to spectacular results.

Last year GLB did 40 rugs a week in a big week this year 200 is a good week and they are still growing!

Jan will talk about the profit in the add-on sales AND HOW TO SELL THEM. Including 6 rugs in the door this week for cleaning and the ticket price is $7,482 and that is before adding in the padding.  Jan will explain how this is not some up-sell trickery but how it is just serving his customer’s best needs.

Most of you know Doug and Anthony, two years ago they were cleaners who did some rugs and this year they are the dominant go-to rug cleaners in their area.  How they took a little sideline and turned it into the biggest part of their business. Anthony is from Naples Florida where he has tapped the well to do expensive rug crowd but Doug is washing rugs in tiny rural town in North Central Pa. This is your chance to learn the secrets of their success.

They will be doing small group sessions with you to show you how they did it and you can too.

Besides showing you how they did it the guys from Glyndon Lord Baltimore will show you the spa that can handle 200 Rugs a Week with only two techs and a delivery driver. In fact they feel they won’t have to add a part time tech until they are going over 250 rugs a week.

Washington DC 2013 Itinerary

Friday, June 7, 2013

Herat Oriental Rug Warehouse
106 South Early Street Alexandria, VA 22304
(703) 370-3902
A massive wholesale rug warehouse with more rugs than you have ever seen in one place.

9:00 am – Meet in lobby to sign in & pick up badges
9:30 am – Welcome speech with Barry O’Connell in hotel lobby
9:45 am – Carpool to Herat Oriental for hands-on Rug ID with Barry O’Connell, Dusty Roberts, and others (beginner, intermediate, advanced levels)
12:30-1:30 pm – Lunch (on your own)
1:30 pm – Back to Herat Oriental for more hands-on Rug ID (what you should know about an appraiser’s perspective)
4:30 pm – Carpool back to hotel
6:00 pm – After hours FUN & “Cigar Bar”

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Glyndon Lord Baltimore Cleaners
6 Central Avenue Glyndon, MD 21071
(410) 833-5200

8:30 am – Meet in lobby for Day Two events
9:00 am – Board motor-coach for trip to Glyndon Lord Baltimore’s facility
10:30 am – Interlink demonstrations & discussions with Scott Warrington, Doug Heiffermann, and Kim Stain, Q & A
1:00-2:00 pm – Lunch (on your own)
2:00 pm – Rotating Groups: RugLover 500% Club with Anthony Belmonte, Jan Sandler,  Doug Moerschbacher and the guys from Glyndon Lord Baltimore, Plant tour with John from GLB, Taking the Perfect Rug Photo. Plus more…
4:30 pm – Board motor-coach for trip back to hotel
6:30 pm – After hours FUN & Cigars, Bars, and best of all Networking Time with people who have been through what you are going through.

***PRICES***

Same as last time:\

·         1st attendee; $700

·         2nd attendee; $350

·         3rd or more attendee; $175.

Special Alumni Savings:

·         1st attendee; $600

·         2nd attendee; $300

·         3rd or more attendee; $150.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

10:00 am – Meet in the Hotel conference room for Day Three events
10:15 am – Hands-on social media workshop & website critique with Barry O’Connell.
11:00 am – Rug Advocate Software demonstration
11:15 am – Rug Lover Marketing – Foundations Program, Q & A
1:00 pm – End

We are back at the same hotel as last year:

Sheraton Suites Old Town Alexandria

801 North Saint Asaph Street

Alexandria, VA 22314

(703) 836-4700

Group name: Rug Lovers Tour OR copy and paste the following link into a web browser for the RugLovers Tour Page.
https://www.starwoodmeeting.com/StarGroupsWeb/res?id=1303218967&key=26DAA

The Law of Reciprocity

There is a law of human nature that if you understand it the power to change lives will be in your hands;

The Law of Reciprocity

This is as old as the hills and applies to everyone but most people never really think about it. It is so important that God even told us about it in the Bible for does it not say:

“give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38, ESV)

This is one of the most basic building blocks of society. People like people who contribute to the common good. To put it simply people respond positively to people who give before they take. In fact the more you hold off from taking while you continue to give the receiver feels an increasing debt to reciprocate. The receiver feels an increasing need to do something for you. This to put it simply is the law of reciprocity or as God says “give, and it will be given to you”.

In my office building there is a small convenience store in the lobby. The owner is a friendly fellow who never charges tax and never gives pennies in change. Since the store stays open I can only assume he pays the tax out of the money he collects. Also he rounds everything you pay down. If it should be $1.35 for something he says a dollar and a quarter. By discounting his prices on every sale to me I feel like I want to give him all the business that I can. He also does things like alterations and shoe repair so I bring in things that normally I would just have done closer to home. But look carefully at this scenario; he is the owner. He sets the price. If he charges $1.25 for something marked $1.35 + tax then the real price is $1.25 (tax included). So even though I know it is a game I continue to play. He makes concessions and I reciprocate by giving him more business.

We see this in marketing opportunities. The perfect example is my good friend Anthony Belmonte. Anthony offered to clean rugs for a thrift shop that is run by a charity. By giving cleaning to a very worthwhile charity the charity sells more rugs for more money because they look great after being cleaned. Because it is a gift they feel compelled to reciprocate by letting their contributors know what a good man Anthony is. The contributors reciprocate by giving Anthony business. But here is a wonderful twist to the equation; the reciprocity is not even. Anthony actually gets 5 to 10 rug jobs for every free cleaning job he does. As the good book says “Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.” By being a good and generous man Anthony reaps the harvest of his generosity.

Breaking the Law of Reciprocity at your own Risk

Just as society tends to reward the generous man who gives freely society tends to penalize those who take but do not give back.  Society has various names for this type of person. My favorite is Mooch but also Bum, Freeloader, Leach, Sponge and in Yiddish; Schnorrer.
I was going to illustrate this part with a story about a mooch from Southwest Virginia but I realized it would be unkind and besides he is so damn dumb that the point would be lost on him. So let me close this by saying be the first to give and the last to take and you will gain so much more.

My area is too poor, too small, too competitive

 Whine, whine, whine I hear it all the time: “My customers will never pay that” or “maybe in a big city but not in my area”.  It gets real old after a while and every time somebody starts with the excuses I know the odds are overwhelmingly that the excuse is bogus. What they are really saying is they don’t know how to make it work or they lack the confidence to try. Let us look at some of the examples

My area is too small to support a Rug Cleaner. Try telling that to Doug Moerschbacher he lives and works in Pleasant Gap Pa with a population of 2,879. Doug is succeeding in rural North Central Pennsylvania in a county of only 154,722 people. He also did it recently against stiff competition. Another small market success story is Scott Kentfield. He lives and works in Travers City MI the largest city in the 21-county Northern Michigan region with a population of only 14,674. Success anywhere takes hard work but population is not a limiting factor for most people.

My area is too poor to support a Rug Cleaner. Scott and Doug do not live in affluent high income areas but they do not have it nearly as tough as George Bell. George is from Jackson Mississippi the poorest city of its size in the USA but the suburbs are the 8th poorest in the country.  So can an 80% black very low income city support a rug Washer? No, it can support two and both of them eat regularly. Business is so good that George just put in his second centrifuge. But George Bell’s success is not enough to hold back Terry Wetzel’s business. The relative wealth or lack of it is not the limiting factor for most people.

My area is too competitive to support another Rug Cleaner. Big established Rug Cleaning plants that dominate an area are not to be feared. Remember Doug Moerschbacher? When Doug started there were two well established rug washers in his area. Doug is now #1 in his market and he is more expensive than all his competition.  Going up against the 3rd generation well financed well established behemoth is a great way to go. But don’t try to undercut they will eat you alive. Charge more, sometimes a lot more than they charge.

All his sounds counter intuitive to most people. What we have done in RugLover Marketing is to short cut the process and save you 10 or 20 years of trial and error. George Bell has spent his life building a great business. But guys like Doug Moerschbacher, Anthony Belmonte and others have short cut the process and are building best in class business in record time. 500% growth is possible and if you do the plan and really work it is a very realistic goal. If you want to charge far more than your competition, wash more for greater profits and see explosive growth you are our kind of cleaner.

For more information drop Dusty Roberts a line at Dusty Roberts (info@rugbadger.com) or

Stephen A. Roberts

1-866-885-7847

Cell 250-686-7847

Tub Washing or Reckless Tub Washing?

You may also want to visit: Lawsuit over Chlorine and Oriental Rug Washing

For well over a year I have been concerned with the trend towards Tub Washing of Oriental Rugs. Tub washing in its self is not a bad thing in fact in some cases tub washing is a great idea. Paul Iskyan of Rug Renovating the world’s largest rug washing plant uses tub washing for 5 to 10% of his total volume. But one company has been pushing the idea that any size rug plant can load up all their rugs in tubs which they sell and wash all the rugs together. In my surveys 80% or more of all rugs coming in for cleaning have pet contamination primarily dog and cat urine. Tom Monahan of Centrum Force has assured me personally that Tub washing with their chemicals is safe and effective and he has a lab report that proves his claims. But Tom won’t release the report. Now Tom has admitted in a public forum that he uses Dichlor in the bath. Dichlor is a granular pool chemical commonly used to “Shock” a pool or hot tub by turning to Chlorine Bleach in water. This is so shocking (pardon the pun) that it is best if we read what Tom had to say:

Here is exactly what Tom M posted on a discussion board”

“We use Sodium-Dichlor, as do a number of Centrum Force® wash tub owners. A cup or two for 1200 gallons of water. Tests have proved that this is sufficient for our intended purpose. We do not use it purposely to eradicate urine. We remove Urine by using another product. We saturate a rug with U-Turn chemistry, allow at least 30 minute dwell time, and then flush with water using our Centri-Maxx® horizontal centrifuge.

The reason we use granular Sodium-Dichlor in the wash tub has an obvious two fold objective.

1: It provides a barrier of protection in the water to prevent cross contamination of unwanted bacteria while rugs swim together in the tub during a wash cycle.

2: While charging the water for sanitation is accomplished, its properties help in neutralizing floating fugitive dyes releasing from rugs.

This begs another question: What other additive is put into the same water to help manage dye loose in the water from bleeding rugs? Only Wash Tub owners know that "Secret Sauce."

Here is one product we have used:

You can get something like it where pool and spa supplies are sold.” http://mikeysboard.com/forum/showthread.php?265843-Question

When Tom refused to release his secret report I was suspicious but I never imagined anything this devastatingly terrible and blatant. Chlorine is bad for wool. It breaks down the scales and weakens the fibers. Chlorine is regularly used to descale wool in low chlorine concentration baths. This is used to make wool clothing suitable for machine washable clothing. In that case removing the scales is fine for that specific purpose but not for hand-woven Oriental Rugs. It is not just bad for handwoven Oriental Rugs it is very very bad!

By reducing the felting properties of wool the rug becomes more fragile and causes it to wear faster. Additionally removing the scales which allow felting the wool is weaker again accelerating the wear. But that is not all of it. Over time the scales of good untreated wool open and refract light giving the rug what aficionados refer to as jewel tone colors. Without the scales the rug can never reach that pinnacle of beauty that rug owners often wait 50 years to occur. If a rug survives 50 years or more after regular Tom Monahan style tub washing it will never show the beauty that it would have had with proper care and maintenance.

A special plea to Tom Monahan and the Centrum Force® wash tub owners who use Dichlor: Stop! This is wrong, it is bad for the rugs and if you continue to do this reckless practice you should warn your customers that you will co-mingle their rugs with other rugs that may be contaminated with urine, feces, vomit, blood and a host of other problems in a large tub of chlorinated water. 

I hope you enjoyed this review of Tom's article. Comments are welcome and if Tom or his fellow washers find fault with anything I have written they are welcome to contact me and I will post their response here and if I got anything wrong I will correct it.

Oriental Rugs “Fine Art” or Not

I recently had this question posed to me by a Southern California Appraiser. Her customer had extensive water damage from a broken pipe. The insurance company paid the far larger water restoration claim but only allowed $3,000 of $14,000 of the claim for two very fine Tabriz rugs. Their rational was that the rugs were “Fine Art” and the policy had a $3,000 cap on loss of “Fine Art”. I wrote the following opinion and I am quite pleased that the insurance company accepted it and paid the $14,000 claim. I owe part of the credit to a University Professor who forever burnt into my consciousness the phrase; “Words have meaning”. With that in mind here is the letter that prompted the insurance company to pay the full claim (Client information removed).

Hello,

A question has been posed to me: Is a Persian Tabriz rug a work of “Fine Art”? This has been an ongoing question with those who assume that Fine Art means something that is beautiful and I have been dealing with this question going back at least to when I authored the Oriental Rug entry for the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia.1 Since words have meaning I turned to my Oxford Universal Dictionary. 2 “Fine Art” means art that is “the art that is concerned with “the beautiful “or appeals to taste. Often restricted to the arts of design, as painting sculpture, architecture. Hence in sing. one of these arts.” As such Fine Art is an object whose purpose is to be art rather than an object of useful purpose that may or may not be beautiful.

So then the pertinent question is was the Tabriz rugs meant to be, and used as, “Fine Art” or were they made with a useful purpose other than to delight the senses. In this case the rugs were purchased to be floor coverings and were placed in an area where they received foot traffic.  The intent and use shows the rugs to be “Furnishings”. The Oxford Universal Dictionary2 defines Furnishings as “Furniture, fixtures, apparatus, etc…”

Price, value, and inherent beauty have nothing to do with whether something is Fine Art. Therefore a rug made to be a rug and used as a rug is not and cannot be “Fine Art”.

Yours truly,

Barry O’Connell

SeniorFellow Academy of Oriental Rugs

Footnotes:

1. Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. Charles Scribners & Sons; 1 edition (November 27, 2002)

2. The Oxford Universal Dictionary. Oxford at the Clarendon Press; 3rd edition (1955)