I’m not real proud of this post title, but it’s honest. I was hot to trot about a beautiful rug I’d discovered by an amazing visual artist at a fancy rug store in Shoreditch, called Floor Story. I worked with them to figure out a bespoke palette, dimensions, and design (bigger than a runner, to do our whole living room)… and I just realised we couldn’t justify the expense with kids who destroy things on the regular.*
So I backed off the amazing beautiful rug hunt and started looking to ready-made options. But we needed kind of weird dimensions! And I’m fancy! And picky! I started looking on Etsy, and discovered a TON of vendors who copycat designer rugs, usually for vastly less money. Now, I’d feel even more gross and weird about this if I were, like, supplying the design and asking them to create that. (And technically I guess I could have done, given that I had the rug printout schematic from the shop… but I would draw the line before that, personally.) I did, however, notice a shop that had other Floor Story designer rug copycats, and that caught my attention.
The specific rug I had spotted was one I’d had my eye on, but decided was too risky for our design because it wasn’t busy enough to disguise stains from the kids. Plus it had a kind of funky 3-D texture element that was incredibly cool and artistic but felt a little weird to walk on, and I thought we might never get used to that. But a cheap copycat? That someone else had already identified and made, so I wasn’t the one throwing the designer spec to the vultures? Fair enough, I thought.
Reader, I regretted it. The rug got made for less than a quarter of what I’d been quoted,** sure, but… it was commensurately inferior. The colours were off, the threads were pulling out a bit, it definitely lacked the 3-D element, the yarn was more loosely tufted and shed like mad (as all cheaper wool rugs do). Yes, it was cool to get specific dimensions exactly as I wished, and define the colour palette (though nowhere near as specifically as I had wanted to). That was useful, and it was great to save a buck during a financially trying time.
But worst of all, over time, look how tremendously badly it has faded from sun exposure! All rugs fade over time when exposed to direct sunlight, true, but I’ve never had one get like this in less than a year. This is extreme. And its’ not a trick of the light or anything – it’s THAT faded; you can see the darker brighter spot where the sofa usually goes, and the spot immediately in front of the sofa that gets light exposure and foot traffic and stain treatment. Pretty bad!
I had actually custom designed another rug previously, with a designer called Claire Gaudion who is (shockingly, to me!) no longer doing rugs! She was tremendously patient, helpful, ethical,*** and generous in co-designing a bespoke Art Nouveau patterned giant hand-tufted wool rug for our last apartment, which was a splurge given that it was a rental but which thankfully still works in our new space, sort of (it doesn’t fit under the built-in wardrobes but otherwise fits in our bedroom almost perfectly. When we someday improve those wardrobes, we’ll slide it into place for sure.)
The rug I had designed with Claire was super duper high quality – the only wool rug that I’ve NEVER had a shedding problem with! (Most rug descriptions say that shedding is normal and will dissipate with vacuuming. This second part usually isn’t true – it never dissipates! With Claire’s rug, it truly never happened in the first place; that’s how tightly fit together the pile was of the very fine yarn her workshop used. It was magnificent. Still is, but didn’t fit this space, and was big enough that I couldn’t justify cutting it down for our new living room.)
So, we are making the Etsy rug work. Nobody but me probably notices the fading or imperfections, and there are plenty of other imperfect design things in this room to take your eyes off it, haha. (I really love having a well-designed space, and it just… isn’t. happening right now. But that’s life! At least there’s a fun rug to pull your attention!)
So, should you cheap out and buy a designer knockoff rug on Etsy? Answer: maybe. Ask these questions:
- Are you a designer or do you work in the design trade at all? (If yes, then no, don’t buy a knockoff.)
- Are you looking for something that will last and withstand the test of time/pets/kids? (If yes, then no.)
- Are you looking for something that will be ready quickly? (If yes, then no. It takes a while to make and ship a rug!)
- Are you looking for a bespoke fix where you get to specify things like colours and dimensions, and yet you know you’ll replace your rug in ~2 years’ time? (If yes, then maybe, sure. You’ll still have the other quality issues, and you’ll have to wait many weeks/months.)
If you do end up buying a rug from an Etsy vendor, my biggest piece of advice is to insist on it being shipped to you rolled rather than folded. It’s considerably cheaper for them to fold it, but all the other reviews from the Etsy store I used**** had complaints of the fold never coming out of the rug once it was laid flat, so I asked to pay more and have it rolled, and the seller agreed.
But really, don’t do what I did, IMO, unless you KNOW your rug is going to get destroyed anyway. Work with a vendor like Floor Story, or, if you need to save money, get a ready-made rug in colours that work, and have either the vendor or a local carpet store cut it to your dimensions and re-bind the edges for you, so you can make an old rug work in a new space. I won’t call this design move a mistake, exactly, but it’s not one I’d repeat.
*Parenting has forced me to shift my thinking in a lot of items from “one-time longer-term purchase” like clothing and accessories and furniture, to “consumable item” like food and toiletries and video game items like potions, heh. Even breakable dishes and glasses. But I hadn’t yet made the shift into thinking of rugs and soft upholstered furniture as “consumable” just yet. I now know this was overdue, haha.
**I think the rug design we were working towards would have been over £3k. This rug was about £800. The bigger rug I had done via Claire Gaudion was under £3k and nearly twice the size, for what it’s worth, but commensurate high quality to Floor Story, I believe. I haven’t yet gotten to actually live with a Floor Story rug – #goals – but I can tell they hold up well.
***There were a couple designs only available in other countries or even vintage that I had wanted to copy; she wasn’t OK with even using them as loose inspiration; we needed to come up with our own truly original design. Which we did, and I love it! But it wasn’t a copycat in any way, and she was very clear and firm about that.
The rug was also damaged in shipping; she wanted to have the whole thing remade, but I said let’s just see if we can get it cleaned or repaired or whatever first. She did, and it was, and I couldn’t tell even the slightest difference but she still offered me a generous discount.
Plus, her actual custom design work was no charge despite a considerable amount of time and effort – she charged a per-metre rate, the same as it would have cost to do one of her ready-made designs in a bespoke colourway. I was astonished by this! The price for customising with her was lower than I think it merited; for what it’s worth, the quality of the Floor Story product is akin to hers but you get to see samples and work with them in-person; I believe the service they offer is 100% worth it.
****I’m not linking to the Etsy store because I don’t want to negatively affect their reviews; these are folks making a livelihood from an admittedly artistic product with a lot of variables and variations. I am, however, sending them a link to this blog post and mentioning the fading issue, so they can look into improving the dye they use for future customers. Call it selectively ethical, I guess, but that’s what feels right here!