Small Business Insights

From the May 12, 2000 edition

She's got it covered

Austin woman turns hobby into art of selling rugs

Melissa Gaskill Special To The Austin Business Journal

There are many places in Austin to buy rugs. Istanbul to Samarkand Tribal Rug Gallery sells art for your floor.

"My specialty is `real' rugs, which are authentic pieces from the weaving areas of the world, not reproductions," says Donna Endres, the store's owner and only employee. "The rugs I sell have collectible value, whether they are old or not. Real rugs hold their value or increase in worth with time."

She says that in the past 15 years, collectible rugs have performed in much the same way as Austin real estate has.

"It's an investment, a way to put money into art," she adds. Art you can walk on

Endres discovered woven art while living in Istanbul in the late 1980s. The bold patterns of the Anatolian kelims made locally appealed to her fine arts background, and she began buying rugs for herself.

"At that time, there were a lot of them, and they weren't too high-priced," she recalls.

Friends who came to visit her overseas loved the rugs, too, and Endres helped them select and buy rugs for themselves. She asked plenty of questions and collected knowledge along with her rugs.

Real estate agent Claudette Lowe was one of those who visited Endres in Turkey and continues to purchase rugs from her.

"The thing about Donna is that she is so knowledgeable. Her advice is always right. It became a passion with her, and she's become one of the experts in the U.S.," Lowe says.

"I have sent her a lot of clients and everyone who deals with her calls and thanks me for recommending her, she is so personable. She cares about what she is doing, is passionate about it, and that shows."

After moving back to Austin, Endres made periodic trips to the East, bringing home suitcases full of rugs. She sold them to friends, often over wine and cheese at her own or someone else's home. She joined the Houston Oriental Rug Society and the Textile Museum, attended the American Conference on Oriental Rugs, and began amassing a personal library on rugs and weaving. Those credentials are important in this field.

"There are a lot of reputable, well-meaning people in the business," rug conference board member Mark Hopkins says, "and a lot of snakes. It is hard to tell people how to know the difference."

Because the societies are dedicated to education, he says, a dealer's membership in one assures a buyer that the seller is at least further along on what is a long learning curve.

"It is a very complex field and requires a lot of self-education and experience," he says.

Endres paid as much attention to building her reputation as she did to expanding her collection.

"I built a reputation as someone who is reputable, with great pieces and great prices."

Her customers agree.

"She really tries to do right by her customers," says author Mary Willis, who began buying from Endres six years ago and turned her sister into a customer as well. "We've shopped around enough to have a sense of prices, and she does very well in that regard."

Endres decided early on to use profit from rug sales solely to build her inventory, and she took a full-time job as a radio producer to make that work. For 12 years, she used her connections and friends in Turkey to find small quantities of rugs, and each year her sales increased.

Then last December, a small retail building at West 34th Street and Medical Parkway became available, and Endres realized a long-time dream of opening a gallery. The additional space has made it possible to enlarge inventory and to display larger rugs, as well as to offer related services such as appraisal, cleaning and restoration. She knows it's easier for people to casually shop at the gallery, rather than having to make a private appointment.

Most of Endres' original clients continue to buy from her, as do a steady stream of new customers, many of them young people with their first homes. The popularity of hardwood floors in Austin serves Endres well. Factors such as these have propelled the business' revenue into six figures, and the first quarter in the new location approximated that of the business' previous four quarters.

Naturally, there were opening and promotion expenses, the cost of additional inventory and higher operating costs. Still, Endres opened the gallery without raising her prices. She intends to increase her sales volume, yet remain small enough to focus on individual attention to customers.

She serves mainly people who make a distinction between commercial and non-commercial, Endres says, and who want something unique.

"Her rugs are like snowflakes -- no two are alike," says Realtor Jeannette Cook, another longtime client. "The more you learn, the more fascinating it is, all the different tribes and how weaving is a part of their culture."

When Barbara Savage travels from New Jersey to visit her daughter Dina Berger, she usually fits in a trip to Endres' gallery.
"You just can't find these anywhere else," says Savage, who has antique rugs in each of her bathrooms and a number of other rooms. "Everybody comments on my rugs."

What Endres enjoys is helping people understand what they like and finding an appropriate rug. She remembers her clients, the rugs they bought, where those rugs fit and what will go with them.

She also knows her collection, choosing deftly from the piles of larger rugs along the walls or the smaller ones stacked on shelves to match a client's previous purchase or new need. She's even taken rugs back from customers when their needs changed and they wanted something different.

Because she personally buys the rugs, Endres is familiar with the history and value of each piece.

"I love her stories of what the symbols on the rugs mean," Willis says. "She often knows the people who made the rugs. It's like you have something living."

Many of the rugs she sells were originally made to keep, Endres says, not to sell. These pieces of woven art are considered assets in the weaving world.

Today, there are hardly any antique rugs still on the market, and even newer, good rugs are harder to find. But Endres continues to travel regularly to weaving areas in the Middle East to carefully choose rugs. The name of the business stems from Turkey's "Silk Road," stretching from Istanbul to Samarkand.

"Those years in Turkey gave me relationships with people," she says. "The Iranians and the Turks, if they like and respect you, they'll give you special treatment."

The customers of Istanbul to Samarkand are the real beneficiaries of that treatment.

MELISSA GASKILL is an Austin-based free-lance writer.




Copyright 2000 American City Business Journals Inc.

This article is reproduced here solely for the purpose of furthering scholarly discussion in the field of Oriental rugs and this use is protected under the fair use provision of the US Copyright law.