Kyoreder of Rugs is a small local business run by Anayah, a rug obsessed, multitasking woman. She started her online shop because of friends and family asking for advice on where to source affordable beautiful rugs like she had curated in the past. Having grown up in a culture where hand knotted rugs are considered heirloom commodities, Anayah had collected a lot of personal treasures from different adventures. Anayah received her first rug by her father around the age of 12, so her obsession grew from there. It wasn’t too hard to reach out to the multiple vendors through her family, so KOR was born. I’m excited that Anayah agreed to an interview where we can discuss where the business goes from here.
Were antique rugs a common practice in your family?
My parents loved to go rug shopping and we didn’t have a babysitter or anything at the time and so we always went with them when they had to go do these errands. I remember sitting on a stack of rugs while my dad was shopping, and they’d be feeling the pile and talking about the feel of the fabrics. Everywhere we would go, even on our trips, they would be shopping for these kinds of things. I remember how my dad gifted me a rug when he came back from a business trip in Pakistan. I didn’t understand the fascination at an early age, but that slowly changed over time. I thought it was just super annoying and normal and then I moved to the states and I got married and then I had to set up a house. I had 15 of my own personal rugs and my husband who is from the states was like, “What the heck is this?”. I explained that this was just a normal traditional in my household. You set up your home and rugs are given to you as a wedding gift. My sister gifted me a rug for my wedding. It’s just a normal thing; that and bold jewelry because we believe that it appreciates rather than depreciates. You can always have it for a long time. You can always sell them and get good money if you ever need it and you can always pass them down because they don’t go out of style. This concept turned into a business mostly because everyone kept asking me like, “Oh, where did you get this? I want some. Can you help me set up my house?”. My husband encouraged me to investigate reselling vintage rugs and dive into Instagram promoting it.
How difficult is it to add entertainment value to rugs or make it exciting for people new to the industry?
Initially it was all about pretty pictures and just staging and styling and the rugs really spoke for themselves. When a typical customer thinks of a traditional rug, they just see this classic red rug. It sparked my interest in taking that vintage look and modernizing it. Obviously as Instagram has evolved, that doesn’t help you grow and once I decided to make it more of a business, it was a lot harder. So more of that is like your personality. I personally will try to make the content funny or sarcastic, which is so me or things like that are interesting. So just trying to focus on something unique and then playing from that is the key factor and the most important thing is being relatable because I just try to show my day-to-day life. There’s nothing too crazy and people appreciate that, and they feel like I’m approachable so they could ask me questions.
Has there been any cultural influences from outside Pakistan that came into your business?
My parents are originally from India, but I grew up in the middle east and then we moved to America. I speak 5 languages and think that exposure alone is crucial to my previous projects and accomplishments. The middle east is a big rug business. My essential culture is a big rug business and then on top of that we traveled a lot when I was living there. We also have a lot of exposure to Turkey and my sister used to work for the UN, so she’s been to Iraq and Jordan and Syria and Palestine and Morocco. We would always have a little bit of all these different cultures and then we married into a South American family. So, then we traveled to South America and Central America to meet new families. I think just having all of that has exposed us to a lot of different cultures, styles and just a lot of respect for that and influence.
What are the factors that a customer must look for when determining a quality rug?
I think one of the key things for me is that you want it to be hand knotted because a hand knotted rug will literally last your lifetime, if not your generations. They’re just so sturdy. You must look at what the origination of these rubs were. They were tent coverings and tent floorings and so they were meant to be used. They provided warmth and purpose but weren’t just simple decorations at the time. Also, it truly supports a dying art because the weavers possess such a beautiful skill and it requires so much work. To make one 9 by 12 rug can take months to complete. With fast fashion, it’s a similar concept of just cheaper rugs that you can machine made and they’re using printed inks and non-vegetable dyes. That is not good for our planet or our health. Some of other things you can look at is the basic material. Is it made of wool or some natural fiber like cotton or silk? Does it have a sheen to it? Is it thick and sturdy or is it flimsy? And then does the pattern stand out? A lot of times if you flip over the rug and if the pattern on the back is just as clear as the pattern on the front, that’s some exquisite work. And so that value of the rug keeps going up from there. The messier the pattern is on the back, the less detailed and less knots there are.
Did you have any notable client interactions related to your work with Apartment Therapy?
The apartment therapy feature was where I provided a rug for the blogger and the bathroom that she used to furnish with the rug in it was featured. It wasn’t specifically me being featured. It was more her space that was being featured and my product was in that space. It was amazing exposure because she was wonderful about tagging and mentioning that she shopped vintage and she shopped small. The show was our HGTV feature because this designer Brian Patrick Flynn reached out to me. I provided him with a bunch of rugs, and he redesigned the home and then that home was completely designed for a lucky winner.
Are there any upcoming projects you’re excited about?
We’re taking a break over the holidays. Usually the holiday season I work a lot on doing a lot of giveaways and charitable giveaways. I’m a pediatrician, so I work some very interesting hours. I was very worried from the COVID aspect as well, but we did pretty good because I think everyone was home and because our business is mostly online, there wasn’t any major impact. The only thing that had to change was that we used to go in and help people by bringing the rugs and trying it out in their home. Being able to see it and feel it really makes a huge difference compared to a static picture. But that’s when we implemented the rug approval process, which is where you can just message me and pick up to four rugs and then try it out for 48 hours and then whatever does not work, you return.
