Home › Forums › Heavens Best Forum › Misc › Priceless Rug or Worthless Rag
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December 12, 2005 at 12:55 pm #143021AnonymousInactive
Greetings all, for all of you that clean various rugs, I was just wondering what types of setup and techniques you use. I am currently setup to immerse or rotary shampoo and rinse. I was recently given 8 persians to clean but very labor intensive(moving, drying, fringe work, etc…) with just a garage setup.
December 12, 2005 at 1:47 pm #145580AnonymousInactiveEd,
The Devlin brothers in Denver attended a training class on cleaning area rugs – probably over a year ago. They were kind enough to post a long starter instruction guide based on what they learned. It was a good post.That post was on our old bulleting board. I’m not sure if you can still access it. If you can, search for “area rug” and it should pop up.
Or you could find them in the memberlist and send them an email asking if they saved those instructions in a file that they could send to you. They are real nice and always anxious to help others.
By the way, not to tell you how to set your prices, but most all of us get pretty high prices per sq. ft. for area rugs due to the challenges you mentioned. They do take a lot of time and customers expect to pay a lot more. Here in Alabama I charge $1.00 per sf. and up. I’ve seen other operators mention prices even higher. Also, some of the other operators have learned their competition’s prices and their prices are similarly high.
Good luck cleaning those rugs!
Mike
December 15, 2005 at 1:56 pm #145581schradbrParticipantEd,
Mike is right – the Devlin’s took the IICRC class in rug cleaning (called RCT). We took this class earlier this year, and it has been invaluable.
The challenge is having the right setup. We had to reconfigure our office space to make it work – but it has really paid off.
We increased our prices from an average of $1.50/sf to over $3.00/sf. I’ve lost almost no business as a result of this increase, and I am 100% certain that we’re doing a better job.
December 15, 2005 at 3:10 pm #145582AnonymousInactiveI’m wondering what type of rugs you are cleaning Barry to charge $3.00 a sqft. Do customers pay this for their $30 Wal-Mart rugs or are these all wool rugs?
December 28, 2005 at 3:28 pm #145583schradbrParticipantRon,
When we clean “cheap walmart” or similar rugs, we simply clean these on the customer’s site and charge like wall-to-wall caperting.
The cleaning that I was describing is for cleaning woven Oriental rugs. Generally wool, but some silk.
Hope this helps.
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