Recently in rugs and carpets Category

Our new Beijing flagship store has just opened at Europlaza, in the Shunyi district. We are on the ground floor, between Coldstone ice cream and Comptoire de France cafe (two of my favorite treats in Beijing that had absolutely NOTHING to do with my choosing this spot, probably)

Celebrations, yes, but from a personal standpoint it's more about heaving a big sigh of relief. This last year has been even crazier than normal in Beijing (and it does get very crazy here for retailers).

As some will remember we had a nice store in Danshui town in Shunhuang road, a beautiful courtyard development that unfortunately stood in the way of "progress" in the area just south of the river. It was demolished a few months back, along with the entire south side of the street (though some buildings are still standing and things seem to have ground to a halt for the time being). In typical Beijing fashion the stores along that side of the road got 40 days notice from the local government to clear out. We managed to keep the business running, with the help of Ms Wang of the Dynasty furniture store directly opposite where Danshui used to be, who rented some space in her store to us at short notice. Credit also to my staff and to our decorations company who renovated a space in Dynasty and fitted carpet rails, lighting etc in the space of a week. Looking back I am still not sure how we did it.

The Dynasty store remains open, and we have our collection of antique rugs (especially Khotan and Kirgiz rugs) and also Afghan rugs and kilims there. I am not sure what the fate of the north side of Shunhuang road will be: there are rumors that it will be redeveloped this year too but the timing is uncertain. Now that we have the Europlaza store open I am less "zhao ji" about it.

I have never been a "mall kind of guy", but I've seen the writing on the wall as regards some of the more "characterful" projects hereabouts that I would otherwise be attracted to. Beijing is expanding, and what used to be countryside is fast becoming "downtown". There are some lovely courtyard developments and individual projects around north Beijing, but many will eventually fall prey to compulsory purchase and redevelopment just as we did. Landlords get some compensation as long as they have a structure built on the land they have leased (which explains some of the mysterious dash to construct apparently empty buildings on many sites in north Beijing), but businesses that rent these spaces get nothing.

Hence the choice of a mall this time. Europlaza is big and solid looking, has several floors so I am hoping it won't be demolished any time soon :-)

I am pleased with how the new store has turned out (once again, credit due to staff and contractors for a job well done).  Europlaza is well-maintained space in a good central location (at least for Shunyi area residents, a bit of a trek for those coming from downtown I admit), with good parking and space to let the kids roam safely. There are still some units that are not let on the upper floors, but the supermarket is open in the basement and proving popular.

We continue to focus on costs, which is why I'd love a large downtown store but it is unlikely to happen any time soon. Beautiful handmade carpets are not cheap, but we don't want them to cost more than they need to, and don't want to pay downtown rents that would make them unaffordable. So we will stick with locations some way from town, and hope that downtown residents will make the trip to see our store and buy a carpet at a reasonable price ... and also take advantage of designs and customization service that you can't find anywhere else.

There are contact details, maps and so on for our Beijing stores on our website.

Our air purifier store (Torana Clean Air Center), selling Blueair air filters, is also in the same location.

It's spring again and I've been asked several questions on carpet cleaning so it seems like a good time to post some general advice.

Carpet cleaners in Beijing and Shanghai

There are several companies and individuals cleaning carpets here. Most are doing it the old-fashioned way (with a hosepipe on a concrete slipway) and most do a decent job. If you want a more professional job I suggest to try Chemdry (tel Beijing 010-6436 2846, Shanghai 021-580 4629) since they are an international chain and I think the cleaning solutions they use are better than some. They will also come look at your carpet and advise if they anticipate problems.

Key thing to bear in mind is that no carpet cleaning is foolproof. The main hazards are 1) color running and 2) loss of shape or texture.

Pre-test your carpet for color fastness

The commonest problem with carpet washing is color running, and the culprit is usually red, sometimes black. Good quality dyes don't run, but they are rare: many antique rugs are major offenders since synthetic reds have been around since the 1870s and some of the earliest synthetic reds were the least color-fast. Many carpet manufacturers in China are still skimping on dye quality and reds-that-run still abound. To test whether a color will run damp a small area of rug with a little water and detergent (eg dishwash liquid), then blot it with a white tissue or a white cotton cloth. If it comes away pink then there is some risk of color running. A small amount of color running is not necessarily a disaster, especially if the rug has mostly darker shades. Turkomen and Afghan types often come out of the washing process looking "different but ok" despite (or because of) some color running but if your rug has white or pastel areas next to intense colors these may end up pink.

Wool carpets

Wool is tough and generally washes well, though very cheap wool can sometimes felt and turn hard, and non-woven (tufted) rugs may lose wool tufts if they are getting old and the backing is starting to break down. The most common issue however is color running as mentioned.
In the case of Tibetan rugs sold by Torana we will ship them back to our workshop for washing if customers wish: this gives a good result (it's the way we wash all our new carpets after they are woven) but it is slow because of the shipping back and forth that is involved. The colors in our own-make rugs don't run because we use good dyes (that are also non-toxic). They also stand up to washing well because they are made with long-fiber wool that is properly secured in the knots.

Silk carpets

Silk is much more difficult to wash successfully than wool. Partly this is because dyes don't "take" so well on silk (particularly on the cheaper variety of silk rugs sold in China) and partly because silk is a more fragile fiber than wool. If you have a silk carpet your best bet is to keep it away from shoes/pets/toddlers and try to avoid washing it at all. If there is no other option then go ahead, but don't shoot the carpet cleaner when it comes back! Test colors for fastness according to the method I mentioned earlier.

First aid

For any carpet, wool or silk, mop up spills asap with lots of paper towels, then apply a slightly damp terry towel. Try water (only) on the terry towel first of all, then try adding a little detergent (dishwash liquid) if need be. Do it gently and clean a bigger area than the stain, so that hopefully you don't end up with a small white patch where the stain was. Don't use bleaches or strong stain removers.

My dog chewed my rug

We hear this a lot in Beijing. Not being a dog-owner I have never been able to understand it (I adore carpets but don't consider flavor to be one of their strong features). Try putting a floral scent on the carpet, eg with floral air freshener, since most dogs and cats are not big fans of floral notes, and then get the dog some exercise or a proper hobby. Regarding the chewed carpet, take it back to the original seller, since they are most likely to have materials of the right color. Sometimes repair-able, sometimes not.

There are more general rug and carpet related FAQs on my website.

A search on Google of "organic rug" or "organic carpet" gets plenty of hits, but are any of the products on offer actually organic? I tried the experiment this morning, and at first sight it might appear that there are lots of organic rugs on offer. Many vendors are using descriptors such as "natural" and "organic design", or calling their sites "Organic store", but despite attempts to imply that the products are organic none of the products on offer had organic certification. A few rug sites in the Middle East and Africa made outright "organic" claims but could not offer any certification information to back this up.

There is organic wool on offer for knitting and blanket-making, so why not organic carpets? A little understanding of the materials and process that goes into a handmade carpet reveals why.

The key feature of a handmade rug (or any good rug for that matter) is that the wool used is sufficiently strong and has a long enough staple length to make a durable carpet. A floor rug is an "extreme textile", meaning that it has to take far more punishment than a sweater, for example, and so correspondingly tough wool is needed. In practice this means wool from specialized carpet sheep living at altitude, which grow the long coats required for this grade of wool. High altitude pastures are very large since the grazing is sparse, and nearly all the breeds of sheep have to be tended over migratory routes, sometimes involving hundreds of kilometers of travel, usually by nomadic herders. Wool for our Torana Tibetan carpets for example comes mainly from the mountainous regions in the far west of Tibet, where the pastures are vast.

This poses a major problem for gaining organic certification. The requirements for certification can be seen on the Organic Trade Association website; there are several, but the key one is "Livestock feed and forage used from the last third of gestation must be certified organic", something that is in practical terms impossible for sheep in large open pastures without fences or clear boundaries. Since nomad-produced wool typically comes from many different nomad families it is also very difficult to certify that pesticides are not used. As far as I am aware there are no grades of carpet wool produced in traditional areas that have gained organic certification for these logistical reasons, hence no truly organic rugs.

In the case of Tibetan wool used in our own rugs we are sure that there are no pesticides or disallowed materials used on the grasslands, since it would be impossible for the nomadic herders to use chemicals over the thousands of square kilometers of upland pasture that their sheep range over, but it is unlikely that we will ever be able to prove this. Similarly, cash-poor nomad families are not in the habit of using the pesticides that lowland intensive farmers use, but we are unlikely to be able to prove this to the satisfaction of an organic certification body. Sheep herders and carpet makers in other traditional areas face similar barriers.

For the would-be buyer of carpets there are several conclusions. Firstly, good carpet wool is amongst the least toxic and most environmentally benign of all materials used in contemporary furnishings, yet seeking an "organic" certified wool rug is chasing a mirage. Secondly, in the search for a safe, non-toxic rug pay attention instead to post-processing, dyeing, carpet construction and so forth. Are good quality, non-toxic dyes used? Is it a true handmade rug (good), or a latex/synthetic rubber backed product (bad)?

Buying a pure wool rug is one of the best things you can do for the environment and for your home, the materials are non-toxic and recyclable, and produced in a low-impact way. But for the benefits to become apparent the carpet industry needs to focus on the facts rather than putting up a natural/organic smokescreen in the hopes of fooling customers, while would-be rug users need to educate themselves about what is really important.

From May 1st 2009 we reduced the prices of all our own-make Tibetan rugs by 33%, with no compromise in quality. This is a major change for us, and the culmination of three years of hard work. It's also the most obvious indicator of some more profound changes in the way we run our business.

To backtrack a little, when we first opened our carpet business in Beijing in 1998 it was a very different kind of operation to the one we have today. We sold carpets in a very small boutique store in the Kempinski Hotel (we finally moved out of the Kempinski in March this year, and our Beijing store is now at Danshui in Shunyi). From the beginning however we found that most of our sales were not to hotel guests but to residents furnishing their homes. This realization guided most of what follows.

At the time we opened our store our carpets were contract manufactured for us by a supplier in Tibet. Those who know something of purchasing theory will know that having a single supplier is an uncomfortable position to be in: it doesn't leave you in a strong position to negotiate a better price, and you are very vulnerable if your supplier encounters difficulties.  So in 2001 we set ourselves the target of having three excellent suppliers, a target that came directly from purchasing textbook theory. One of these suppliers which would be our own workshop in Lhasa, in order to get the most competitive price and to ensure that we would always be in the driving seat as far as quality and design were concerned.

Candidly, I also had a personal motive in wanting our own workshop in Lhasa. I enjoy making textiles, and I enjoy experimenting with design and color. I also have an interest in natural dyes, which are not popular where commercial workshops are concerned. Owning our own workshop is a chance to experiment with fewer constraints.

So much for the theory. In practice it took us until 2006 to turn vision into reality. We bought land near Lhasa, on the banks of the Kyichu river, built a weaving workshop and we are gradually building up a skilled workforce. With our own production facility for our Tibetan rugs we are able to make exactly the designs we want, and also to ensure that no compromises are made with raw material quality. This latter aspect was a big problem with contract suppliers, who were forever looking for ways to cut costs, particularly by substitution of cheaper wools. This aspect can now be guaranteed.

While building up our own workshop, we added two more suppliers: the excellent and internationally renowned Michaelian and Kohlberg company who have been making handmade carpets in China for more than twenty years and who specialize in Middle Eastern rug making techniques. We have also recently added kilims and other items from rug makers in Afghanistan, who are very competitive in terms of price. These textiles complement our Tibetan rugs and ensure that we can offer the full range of styles and price points to those designing their homes.

My particular expertise is in design, development and color, and we have built a unique facility for creating new colors, using the best of both traditional and contemporary dye methods. Our eventual aim is to broaden our current scope to work with other professional carpet manufacturers in Asia, in addition to our own weavers, to make better and more varied carpets (and we invite potential carpet manufacturing partners to get in touch). We have already participated in a successful project to research and document traditional dye methods in Tibet, and more work is ongoing in this area. We also lead the field in environmental and product safety, particularly through correct choice of non-toxic starting materials and processes.

Back to price. Though this wasn't the only reason for founding our own workshop, it was a major factor, especially for our customers. By eliminating one layer in the supply chain as well as reducing costs generally in our operation we are now able to offer rugs at a significantly lower price, and that is what we have done. The true extent of this is only apparent when you consider that the price we charge today is actually 40% lower than when we opened our business in 1998: when inflation is taken into account our prices today are 60% lower in real terms than when we began. A major factor in our favor versus other carpet companies worldwide is that we don't maintain any offices overseas, since the overheads from these can often add up to more than the production costs of the carpets.

In keeping with our focus on design and interiors we moved out of our Beijing hotel location earlier this year, and we are now in a new store in Danshui town in the Shunyi district. We have more space here (200m2) and display a wider range of carpets and sizes. In Shanghai we have a lovely two-storey space in An Fu Lu in the French Concession district.

You can still find some rugs that are cheaper than ours here in China ... provided you are prepared to compromise on both wool and dye quality and accept (for example) short-fiber Mongolian wool and Chinese dyes you might be able to save a further 30% or so. Is it worth it? Come look at the colors and wool in our rugs and then decide.

We often get orders for rugs from former expat residents of Beijing and Shanghai who have returned to their home countries. While here in China it is easy to lose sight of the huge difference in price and service level between here and "back home". The kinds of service for custom rugs that we offer is only available in London and New York (for example) from a very few top-end suppliers, and it comes at a price that is usually at least five times the cost of one of our rugs, and often more. This is because the cost of employing a designer in a London office is quite staggering. Even a basic "off the peg" rug costs three times the price of a Torana rug here in China.

Both expat residents, local residents and visitors to Beijing and Shanghai are warmly invited to come see our stores, and also to contact me to talk about the services we offer. I am traveling fairly often these days, but always interested to meet in one of our stores by arrangement, if I don't happen to be there on the day in any case.

One final word: our price list for 2009 is now set, but we don't guarantee to keep our prices fixed at this level for ever. Most of the costs that can be driven out of our operation have been driven out already, and inflationary pressures will certainly build as economies come out of recession, led by China...

Kashgar is one of the westernmost outposts along the part of the Silk Road in China. It's the point where the two main routes across the Taklamakan desert converge, and it's been an oasis town and a trading post for two millenia, perhaps more.

I've been traveling through this region looking for carpets and textiles for years, and first visited in 1996, but in recent times I've mostly passed through on my way to other destinations and not stopped there. On my most recent trip I decided to spend some time there and to see if things have changed. The result is this blog, some photographs, as well as a haul of textiles from the oasis towns in Xinjiang.

Photographs and Textiles
From this weekend (28th March) I have put some of the textiles from this recent trip in our Torana Shunyi store, including carpets, kilims and embroideries. The finds include an interesting (and rare) Uighur kilim, a Kazak decorative appliqué, Kirgiz flatwoven carpets and a remarkable silk robe. I have also put up a set of large format photographic prints on the photowall at the Shunyi store, mostly of the old town in Kashgar. For the impatient, I have put some of them on Facebook at this link.

Kashgar Time
This is a very distant spot from Beijing, a distance which is brought home by discovering that the sun rises here two hours later than in Beijing, and that Kashgar operates its own (unofficial) time, which runs two hours behind official Beijing standard time. Inevitably the two are confused, providing everyone in the town with a perfect and enduring alibi for missed appointments.

Many Kashgar people speak worse Mandarin than I do. This made me feel strangely warm towards them.

Warlord Days
In keeping with its remote location, imperial rule has been intermittent and sometimes absent over the centuries. Towards the end of the 19th century the town and surrounding region were the fiefdom of the famous warlord Yakub Beg, who brought a brief independence at the price (it is said) of destroying the economy. In the bazaar I bought an ancient robe made of purple silk with gold thread that I like to think might have been worn by an official from this period, perhaps in the presence of the old warrior himself.


Sunday Market
On my first visit to Kashgar in '96 I went to the famous Sunday market, and on this trip I went back for a second look.

Traders, farmers and animal dealers from the surrounding area set off on mule-drawn carts in the pre-dawn twilight and arrive in Kashgar around midday, local time, so the market only really gets going in the afternoon.

I can't tell you if the price of a camel is still the same as it was in '96, but the market still looks much as it did then and provides fine entertainment. Dealers bid on animals in secret, passing offers via taps of the fingers, concealed within the sleeves of their robes. The trade is therefore mostly conducted silently, despite the hubbub around. Horses are put through their paces on a short track, with constant danger of colliding with the buyers and sellers. It is crowded, noisy, dirty, smelly and delightful.

Street food is still one of the highlights of Kashgar. My favorite items are fried fish and melon by the slice. Traders stand in the street with a melon, a knife and sell pieces for 1RMB each. I asked one if it was Hami melon (that's the only kind I know from Xinjiang) and he seemed insulted and told me it was Kashgar melon. I decided not to ask whether the fish was Atlantic cod.

The most common street food is the ubiquitous pilaf rice (rice, yellow pepper, mutton). Greasy, with a smell of elderly sheep that seems to linger and follow you around town. I avoided pilaf at the street stalls because I've seen local restaurant hygiene at close hand (there isn't any), opting instead for street foods that are not allowed to linger in a lukewarm state before being sold. Rice parcels with syrup and toffee walnuts are excellent.


Uighur Lite
Has the town changed? Yes, the modern town has certainly seen some changes. There are a good many recent buildings. There's a new architectural style that consists of a concrete structure with brown tiles and minarets stuck on the outside. I call it "Uighur Lite". It's better than it sounds.

There's a nice irony that much local architecture from the '30s onwards seemed to consist of putting some contemporary touches to a basically Uighur building style, and now we have the opposite.

Uighur Cuisine
The most welcome change is the string of new restaurants serving Uighur cuisine that have opened since my last visit. The best of these might be the huge and rather fancy Entizar Altun Orda on the north-western extension of Ren Min Xi Lu. This palatial establishment is decorated inside and outside with about as much carving and decorative tilework that a structure of this type could support, and then some. This is the place to try the pilaf. It is superb, and it is 12RMB. Good pilaf comes laden with dried fruit as well as the mutton.

Also worth trying are the yoghurt and the roast pigeon: beaten flat, impaled on two sticks and barbecued to perfection.

Kittens, Egg Tarts
The following evening I am at a more modest restaurant in the old part of town, eating laghman, the other Uighur staple besides pilaf. This is lamb ragout (lukewarm) served on hand-pulled noodles (also lukewarm). At the everyday restaurants I think it beats the pilaf. This restaurant has deep liver-colored decor edged in cream. There is a poster on the wall of a kitten, seemingly about to pounce on some egg tarts. I check the menu, but there is no sign of this special dish.

Markets
Aside from the Sunday market, the market streets that wind through the older part of the town are also fascinating, and as far as I can see, they look precisely the same as when I was last here. The stalls have an edge-of-the-desert, edge-of-civilization feel. Brick tea (camel logo), rose petals, black cardamoms, rock sugar, sulfur. Spice stalls sell every spice I have ever seen and more, and they smell, like spice stalls everywhere ... of cumin. Just cumin. There's a hat stall next door. It smells of cumin too. And so does the hat seller.

The Id Khar mosque in the center of town seems to have been given the pre-Olympic treatment. Painted canary yellow, it has been tarted up considerably since I saw it last, at least at the grand entrance. The square in front of the mosque has also been remodeled. Gone is the street that idled its way just in front of the mosque entrance, and in its place is a large ampitheater-like public space, with Olympic-sized tv screen at the side. A former covered food street near the mosque with old fashioned tea-houses is gone, and there is a two-story shopping center in its place. Nevertheless, the public space in front of the mosque is still there, and the street photographers (your head emerging from a red rose, you and your lover, re-duplicated, crystallized, kaleidoscope fashion) still have their stalls in the same places.

Inside the mosque there is a calm and pretty prayer gallery, green columns against red prayer rugs. The carpets interest me: they are Khotan rugs from the 1950s-70s (photo above). They have kept their rich red by the shaded inside walls of the gallery, but the sun has faded them to pinkish hues near the outside.


The Old Town
I was apprehensive about re-visiting the old town. Surely most of its mud brick walls must have been swept away by now? I need not have worried. Yes, the margins have been nibbled at, but the bulk of the old town, on a promontory overlooking the Sunday market area, is just as I had remembered it. A sign in a street opposite the Id Kah mosque announces "Kashgar Old Town" and visitors are supposed to buy a ticket to enter, but in March there was no-one around to collect tickets. The old town is anyway much more extensive than the tourist regulated part.

The old town is of wood framed houses, with walls of compacted mud and straw: here and there brick is replacing the mud. Uighur life is conducted behind the walls, hidden from gaze in cool and sheltered courtyards. Doorways are open but protected by billowing sheets of printed cotton, here and there giving glimpses of life inside. It's hard to judge the age of the buildings: mud and straw look the same after 500 years as they do after 5. In one place though I found a doorway with an entrance sunken about a foot below street level, generally taken by urban archaeologists as sign of great age. Above the doorway a lintel carved with a floral vine, worn and nearly illegible. Carved for this doorway five centuries ago, or pulled out of the sand from a far earlier time?

In mid afternoon a breeze was beginning to pick up dust from the surrounding desert, filming the old city in yellow dust. Kids were tumbling out of the schools, collected by grandmothers. Four girls played a skipping game with an elasticated rope. Surely this is the exact same incomprehensible game played by small girls in English schoolyards? The dust filters the light and the colors of the old town are condensed to tones of yellow and ochre. An tall man of indeterminate age and wearing an indeterminate felt hat strides down the alley, gathering his cloak against the wind. It might be 2009, or 1809. A shameless seeker after nostalgia, I am rewarded five, ten, fifty-fold by the old town at Kashgar.




Photographs and Textiles from the Silk Road
By Chris Buckley
28th March - end April 2009
Torana Carpet Center, Shunyi, Beijing
Location map and contact details at this link.

Travel Notes
Kashgar can be reached in one day from Beijing, via a connection in Urumqi, but for the return trip it is necessary to overnight at Urumqi: I stayed at the Airport Hotel there and it was fine.

The best known hotel in Kashgar for overseas visitors is the Seman Hotel, and the rooms in the old Russian consulate inside the Seman grounds make for an interesting (if rather pricey) stay. There are lots of other hotels in town: on this trip I stayed in the nondescript but friendly Qian Hai Hotel for 188RMB a night.

Travel onwards from Kashgar to other parts of the Silk Road is mostly by road.

The slogan BIG OFF! Is in fact from a "sale" sign outside a department store in Osaka, but it's still one of my favorites and it sums up the retail trade in China pretty much too (I might even use it in my stores one day).

As a retail store owner in three cities (Beijing, Shanghai and Lhasa) the condition of the retail business, particularly at the higher end, is of enduring interest to me. The last three years have seen the business change out of all recognition, as a wave of luxury brands has broken over China's cities. International brands felt compelled to get a foothold here, often driven by shareholders who were intolerant of any company that lacked a "China strategy". At the same time property developers have placed substantial bets on high-end retail malls. In the past 3 years there has been a roughly twofold increase in the amount of high-end retail space available in Beijing. Supply and demand were both in place, and a thousand deals were struck. Development time-lags being what they are, these stores are now opening their doors, 2-3 years after inking the deals.

So how are the new stores faring post-September '08, and how do Beijing and Shanghai compare? These are my impressions, unapologetically anecdotal.

First, Beijing's new malls.

Near to my apartment is the newly opened Village at San Li Tun. I have watched this one since it was a large (and very dusty) hole in the ground, through its opening around the time of the Olympics. Initially skeptical, I have been won over by the architecture, which is fun and unexpected, and by a near-continuous stream of events run by a lively management team. Stores are mostly luxury clothing brands, plus a large Apple store, with a strong showing from Hong Kong chains. There are plenty of visitors, but ... and here is the rub ... most are holding cameras rather than shopping bags. The venue has become a fixture on the tourist map almost immediately, but stores look quiet, and most have had "SALE" signs on their merchandise within a month or two of opening.

The second (and equally large) phase of the Village will open soon, just north of phase 1. It will be interesting to see how that fares, opening up post-Olympics.

The picture is similar at nearby Solana: a very large American-style mall also in Chao Yang. Here there are also many international brand stores, but the mall as a whole also seems rather quiet, even at weekends when it should be thronging. Solana has carefully segregated stores of different types and price-points, and the areas of the mall that seem to be busiest (at least in terms of foot traffic) are those with local Chinese brands, particularly mid to low-end, and those focused on a younger segment. There is an important clue here to the shopping habits of Beijing's new middle class.

North of the city in the Shunyi villa residential area there is the recently opened Europlaza mall. This is another western-style development with good construction standards. It's a development that "ought" to do well, given that Shunyi is a high-end residential zone that seems under-supplied with quality retail. According to retailers who have moved in to Europlaza about 70-80% of the total space has been reserved, but the upper floors and many ground floor units are still empty. Retailers seem to be playing a game of "chicken" with the management, having put down deposits but declining to move in until things improve, or perhaps until a better deal is on offer.

Right now, Beijing retail seems to be facing a triple whammy:
1) the global slowdown
2) an oversupply of retail space coming onto the market at the same time
3) that post-Olympic feeling (harder to define, but think of the condition of the balloons you find on your living room floor on the morning after a party)

The logical next step to sort out the economic issues is a big decrease in rents. So far that hasn't happened in the new malls, or only at the margins. To understand why, consider landlord-tenant relations. For a landlord in the retail sector every negotiation with a tenant carries enormous risk: if a lower rent is given to one tenant it will eventually be given to all, particularly in local culture where there are few secrets and all feel entitled to the same deal. Relatively few landlords have "blinked" so far. Expect that to change rather slowly as '09 progresses, more retail space comes on the market and international brands scale back expansion plans. The all important figure is occupancy rate: malls that have achieved a high enough occupancy (70% and up) will hang on to their rents come hell or high water, while those that did not get their space signed up prior to the Olympics will be the first to blink.

The malls I mentioned will succeed in the end: they are good developments in the right places, in China's premier city. But investors and retailers alike should expect the climb to profitability to be agonizingly slow, since with a general slowdown occurring it will take longer for Beijing to absorb the excess retail capacity. My guess is that margins could be squeezed for the next five years, economic recovery notwithstanding. Retailers will also find it frustratingly difficult to negotiate rent decreases for the reasons I've mentioned already: this process will not begin in earnest until landlords are facing the loss of key tenants. The larger retail chains and international brands, with their eye on the longer term, will grit their teeth and pay the piper, but the smaller stores will need to be nimble and in some cases to cut their losses.

All of this will provide some delightful opportunities for Beijing's shoppers, of course.

I'm also a regular visitor to Shanghai. This city also has plenty of "SALE" signs in its store windows, but my impression is that the city is doing slightly better overall, at least in the luxury retail sector. The reasons are probably due to retail supply that has also surged forward, but not quite as exuberantly as in Beijing, combined with a lack of post-Olympic malaise (got the Expo to look forward to). That said, Shanghai's hinterland relies heavily on textiles and electronics, areas that are being hit hard in the slowdown, so expect a tough year ahead here too.

Shanghai also provides an example of the importance of value to local shoppers. While many top-brand stores in the city center do slow or moderate trade, the biggest hit amongst local Shanghainese is the "Outlets" mall. Situated way out of town at the end of a long and traffic-congested car ride, the mall is nevertheless thronging at weekends. The environment is pleasant, the cafes and restaurants decent but nothing special ... the lure is price. Famous labels sell their surplus stock here at discounts of 50-80%, a combination that is irresistible, especially in the current climate. Retailers take note.

So what of my own business? As a retailer (Torana Carpets) I have responded to the changed climate (with startling originality) with price cuts and special deals. But the major change we are making this year is to close our Kempinski Hotel store (at the end of February) and focus our Beijing business at our new location in Shunyi, that we opened last year.

Moving out of the Kempinski is something that would have happened in any case over the next couple of years, but the economic downturn has brought this forward as we focus more on costs. I have a lot of fondness for the Kempinski location, but things have changed in the 10 years since the store was opened. The majority of our sales have always been to Beijing residents, but Beijing residents shopping habits have changed (hands up who shops in hotel lobbies these days). The Shunyi location also gets us closer to a large part of our customer base, and gives us a larger space (200m2) to show an expanding range of carpets. Of this, more later.

Here endeth my longest post ever.

Those Beijingers who have read all the way to the end are congratulated and automatically qualify for a 25% discount on all the carpets ... please come to our Shunyi store to claim your discount! To claim your discount just come to our store, point to a carpet and say the secret code-phrase: "I'll take this one please".

Continuing an occasional series on product safety issues relating to modern furnishings

A recent study carried out in Denmark and reported in the Oxford journal "Human Reproduction" links infertility in women to PFC levels in their bodies. The study can be downloaded in pdf form at this link. The results have also been quite widely reported, including this report on the BBC news website.

PFCs are "Perfluorinated" compounds, a class of chemicals that were mostly developed in the 1950s and that (initially at least) seemed inert and were valued for their water repellant properties. They found applications in textile treatments such as stain-guard treatments for carpets, upholstery and other textiles as well as fire-resistant finishes.

The problem with PFCs, along with many other classes of hydrophobic (water-repellant) organic molecules is that they are concentrated in the fats in our bodies, and our livers have no way of breaking them down or digesting them. This means that they tend to accumulate over time. The health effects of this accumulation are only just beginning to be investigated.

The new Danish study says that "in recent decades a remarkable decline in fertility rates has been observed in developed countries which can largely be explained by social changes ... but may also be in part due to reduced fecundity". 8% of women in the US for example have made an infertility related medical appointment at some point in the past. The study looked at women who had fertility issues and concluded that many of them had higher levels of PFCs in their bodies and that a causal link exists.

So What To Do?
This study is just the latest in a series over the last decade or so that have cast doubt on the safety of many solvents and treatments used in household products. It is likely that there will be more to come. My personal recommendation is to cut out the use of synthetic materials and treatments containing PFCs where (in most cases) good natural materials are available to do the same job:

• avoid stain-resistant treatments, including Scotch-Guard and Stain-Guard and similar materials
• avoid buying items with stain-resistant or fire-resistant finishes
• avoid synthetic carpeting generally
  
• avoid any personal care products with PFCs, "perfluoro", "fluoro", "polyfluoro" and similar sounding ingredients
• use ceramic, metal, glass, wood and bamboo rather than plastic cooking and serving utensils

There is a general review of PFCs by the Environmental Working Group at this link.

On Thursday this week I will be giving a talk for the Beijing International Society. The BIS is open to foreign passport holders in Beijing: talks are free for members, but non-members may also attend (one-time fee: 50RMB, please bring your passport since the talk is inside an embassy compound) There are more details about the BIS on their website:
www.beijinginternationalsociety.com

Here is the talk outline from the BIS flyer:

Tibetan Textiles: Reviving Traditional Skills
Illustrated Lecture
By Mr. Chris Buckley
7.30pm, Thursday, 6 November
Embassy of Kuwait
科威特国大使馆
光华路23号

Keweite Dashiguan
23 Guanghua Lu


Throughout its history, Tibet has been largely pastoral, with its herds of yaks, sheep and other animals providing the material for producing a variety of textile products, including blankets, tents, clothing and, of course, carpets.  However, in recent years many of the traditional skills have been lost.

Chris Buckley, working together with the Tibet Artisan Initiative in Lhasa, has spent the past three years working to recover some of the traditional Tibetan natural dyeing methods.  He will talk about Tibet's rich history of textile manufacture (whether in small-scale cottage industries or larger, commercial enterprises), as well as textile uses.  He will also discuss the sometimes unexpected environmental and social issues relating to dye choice and textile manufacture in Lhasa and area.  

Chris Buckley has lived in China since 1995.  He made his first trip to Tibet in 1996, from which time his interest in Tibetan art and culture developed.  He received a PhD in chemistry from Oxford, training which has proved beneficial to his latest researches into traditional dyeing technologies.

Membership desk opens 7.00pm for 7.30 pm lecture

This just arrived in our Beijing Kempinski hotel Torana store. The rug measures 6ft by 8.5ft.

It's called Great Wall. No prizes for guessing why.

I'm hoping that some Beijing residents might like it as a souvenir of their stay here. This is the first one ... whether we weave any more of these depends on the reaction to this one.