Unable to make a Rug sale yet

[therugstore]

Hi,

I have been a rug seller from India since December 2024. I have over 60 listings, and have made much effort in adding item details, uploading high-quality photographs, offering free international shipping and returns, reduced handling times, offering markdown sales and volume pricing. In an earlier post on the community platform, I was advised to buy some feedback from buyers. I now have 6 positive feedback.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to make a sale as yet. I firmly believe that my products are of good quality and durable.

Can somebody please guide on what more to do, or what could the possible reasons be for this? I am open to all the suggestion and feedback. Please feel free to go through my listings and see what I lack.

Thank you.

[ckimodog]

@therugstore 

It doesn't look like you are selling from India.  It looks like you may be drop shipping from another venue, not to mention your prices are very high.  I would reconsider lowering them, as we can get rugs her in the US for much less so purchasing from a drop shipper (stock photos are giving you away) would not be the financially smart thing to do. I am seeing the same rug in your listing 225924195168 that you have listed for $667 here on eBay selling on Amazon for $47.00.  Really? People are aware of drop shippers and most avoid them as their behavior is very greedy and drop shipping is a very risky selling platform.   I would think about selling something else.

PS FYI December of 2024 has not occurred yet. 

Good luck to you.

[mam98031]

@therugstore 

I assume you meant December of 2023 as we are only in March for 2024.  😍

It is simply tough for international sellers to sell stuff these days.  Shipping from India just takes a good amount of time and if buyers can find similar items more locally to them, it is highly likely they will go that direction.

It is likely since you are doing Free Shipping that the price you are charging for the item is way above what a buyer might find a similar item for elsewhere.

I do hope things improve for you soon.

[therugstore]

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

To be honest, I am not "drop shipping". I am a legit rug manufacturer and exporter from Mirzapur, India with experience of quite a few years now. It is only now that we are shifting to online selling to increase business prospects. The photos are actual ones that I have personally clicked, and I have made, like everyone else does, rug mockups for some of them. But I think I need to work on them if they are giving an impression of being stock photos.

Nonetheless, I take your point of reducing the prices and also appreciate you comparing the rugs. Most probably, the rug that you saw on Amazon for a much lesser price is not handmade and may be of a lesser area.

I have already reduced the price a lot for the quality of rug that I have listed, but I understand customers may not fully appreciate it.

Thanks again @ckimodog 🙂

[therugstore]

Thanks for you reply. I appreciate it.

[mam98031]

You may want to test out doing stated shipping, not Free Shipping.  Sometimes that can help.  It is worth a try.

[chapeau-noir]

Is it hand-made, hand-knotted wool, though? Amazon carries a lot of cheap knock-offs. This is what I think of when I consider wool hand-loomed carpets (it might take almost a year for an artisan to weave one large carpet, and often their name is woven into the design of the carpet).

Hand Knotted Wool Authentic Bidjar carpet

GENERAL: The problem is, carpet dealers will import these special carpets themselves into the US, which can be viewed in a showroom or sold by specialist carpet sellers. It's difficult to spend that kind of money to have something shipped sight unseen from an unknown seller.

[therugstore]

Alright. I would give it a try at least in some of my listings.

Thanks again @mam98031 👍

[therugstore]

Thanks for the reply.

Mine are hand-knotted rugs which are a subset of handmade rugs. Not all handmade rugs are hand-knotted. Hand-knotted means that a weaver (artisan) weaves one knot (called Persian knotting technique), or a group of knots (called Tibetan/Nepali knotting technique) at a time. It is actually very time taking and requires a great deal of effort, patience and concentration. That's precisely why they are expensive and durable. In fact, Persian-knotted rugs are more expensive than Tibetan/Nepali rugs.

Hand-loomed carpets that you mentioned are made on a loom (some degree of mechanisation comes here) and take a lot lesser time than hand-knotted ones. Thus, these are cheaper than knotted rugs. More cheaper than hand-loomed carpets are tufted carpets. Some sellers deploy a clever marketing strategy to term them as "hand-tufted", which falsely gives an impression that they are made by physical effort. Tufted carpets are in fact, made using a "tufted gun" on a latex backing. 

Still more cheaper than tufted rugs are machine-made rugs. These cannot be made from wool, as wool does not have the requisite tensile strength to withstand the rigour of a machine.

I understand your point of carpet retailers in the US selling imported rugs. In fact, they can only do so profitably if they sell the rugs at a premium to take a margin on the actual cost. But as you have rightly mentioned, it is easier for Americans to buy rugs locally, then to buy them from a seller based abroad. It is for this reason that I have purchased some items so as to shoe some positive feedback on my profile.

I hope in the near future, I am able to make a sale.

Thanks again @chapeau-noir 

[fashunu4eeuh]

Hi @therugstore and welcome.

The first problematic thing i noticed is a marketing issue. Some of your gallery (thumbnail) photos show the rugs with furniture in a room setting. Since these photos are so small already on my phone screen, it is a struggle to view the rug’s pattern and colors. They are too obscured by the furniture placement.  

I would recommend moving these “staged” pictures to another spot in your photo line-ups. Then for the gallery photos, show a birds-eye-view of the entire carpet, as you are doing in some of your listings. That first photo is critically important—it is what buyers first see as they scroll down all the thumbnails that appear in their Search results. You need for them to click on your listing. (After all, you are not selling furniture.) The rug needs to be the focus of the buyer’s attention right off the bat.

Wish you much success and hope your sales pick up. Best of luck to you.

[therugstore]

Thank you @fashunu4eeuh for pointing that out. I really appreciate it.

I am going to work on it now. 

And thank you for your wishes. 🙂

[ckimodog]

@therugstore 

Lots of good advice here.  You should really take your own photos with out all the extras that are included in the photos.  Some buyers will think you're including those items with your rugs & could file a SNAD...eBay would side with the buyers complaint too.  That could be an expensive lesson.  I'm sure that's not your focus as a seller.  Work on your prices & photos and hopefully some sales will come your way.

Best of luck!