LAS VEGAS - Although furniture and decorative accents make up the lion's share of Global Views' offerings, rugs are a growing category for the company says David Gebhart, CEO of Global Views.  At the August 2, 2015 cocktail party following ribbon cuttings for more than 19,000 square feet of World Market Center showroom space for Global Views (A-153) and affiliate brand Studio A (A-129), Gebhart showed off the first "rug room" ever done in any of the company's showrooms.

"We really do very well with rugs. We had been running rugs just for visual display purposes, but very quickly we realized that people wanted to buy them. We had so many questions about the rugs and such demand for buying them from us, that we decided it would be very smart to just go ahead and do rugs as a full blown part of our business," Gebhart explained. Rugs in the collection are hand-knotted or hand-tufted in wool or combinations of wool and viscose.

The new Global Views "rug room" has hanging arms on either side of a small space designed to allow for growth in the line. During showroom setup, Gebhart said his team was so excited about the Las Vegas rug display they sent him a video slide show of their work in progress, which he shared with RugNews.com.  "You can see our plans are to expand the rug business, because we are really only utilizing every other possibility here," he said of the hanging arm units. "We've added at least eight to 10 more rugs since the video was taken."

Meant to be an adjunct to elaborate vignette displays featuring rugs with unique furniture and accessories throughout the showroom, the rug room allows customers to see additional patterns and colorways. "Every season we add a few more rugs and take a few more rugs away.  We're doing a lot of good business on rugs now," Gebhart said.

The new Las Vegas showrooms represent a 40% expansion by Global Views. The show stopping 11,502-square-foot Global Views location in the A1 Central West Lobby of the Las Vegas Design Center features a 12-foot-high glass wall spanning the entire central lobby.

Studio A, an affiliated Global Views company, displays its contemporary furnishings and home decor in a new 7,352-square-foot showroom adjacent to the Global Views location on A1. Gebhart said that all the product samples in the Global Views showroom are new. "We sold off all of the old samples when we closed the showroom for renovation - so it would sparkle like a diamond."

He explained that Global Views and Studio A are poised to expand their west coast presence with the Las Vegas expansion. "Customers attending market in Las Vegas whether for the big seasonal shows, or on a daily basis can look forward to seeing more of our product line than ever before with expanded offerings from both Global Views and Studio A - as well as our branded licensed partners - Barbara Barry, Roger Thomas, DwellStudio, Colonial Williamsburg, MCFChan, and our newest product launch in partnership with Julia Buckingham." All of the company's licensors launched new products which were presented during summer Las Vegas market.