Tuesday, May 21, 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.