Couristan opens its new High Point Market featuring new high-end handmade area rugs and residential broadloom
and a history wall previewing its 100th anniversary in 2026.

HIGH POINT, N.C. -- Couristan unveiled its new High Point showroom in the Design wing at IHFC, space D335 with a grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. The new 2,659 square foot showroom’s interiors feature a mid-century modern-inspired design with a contemporary twist, with products featured in furnished vignettes and displayed on racks as well as the company’s popular POS display units. At the same time, the company introduced market-goers to its updated approach to the area rug and broadloom categories.


Georgia Couri cuts the ribbon on Couristan's new IHFC Hamilton Wing showroom alongside Marlys Giordano, Bob Tucci,
Steve Couri, Len Andolino and Charles Romano.
 
“At High Point Market, the big excitement came from our new strategy of going more upscale with hand-knotted and loom-knotted rugs, and higher-end hand-tufted rugs," said Len Andolino, president of Couristan in an exclusive interview with RugNews. “We’re very excited about the response and based on the reaction of customers and our sales force, we know we are on the right path.”


Len Andolino, Couristan president, discusses new high-end handmade area rug strategy.
 
That path involves a strategic decision to upscale and revitalize the company’s area rug business. “We are in the midst of reinventing a 98-year-old company when it comes to the rug part of our business. The focus is on handmade product, and that’s why Marlys Giordano, our vice president of product development on the rug side, has spent the last 16 months developing this vision and creating these rugs.”

OUTDOOR & MACHINE-MADE HOLD STRONG


Couristan's new focus on indoor-outdoor rugs and handmade products take center stage in High Point.
 
Known as a leader in indoor-outdoor rugs, Couristan will continue to be a force in the category, Andolino says. “We will never abandon the indoor-outdoor rug business: it has been paramount to our company for many years, decades. We’ve been the pioneer in that category, and that is going to continue. The same is true for our machine-made million-point polypropylene and polyester rugs,” he explains.

Indeed, industry experts concur that the late Ron Couri was instrumental in bringing indoor-outdoor rugs into the marketplace over 20 years ago. The company also led the industry with in-out broadloom. “We’ll continue to embrace and be a force in the indoor-outdoor category. What I’ m speaking of is handmade rugs as an addition to our machine made and performance collections.”

BROADLOOM INFORMS UPSCALE RUG STRATEGY



Couristan has three segments to its business, a hospitality division, a residential broadloom business and a residential rug business. “We’ve always had an assortment of handmade products, but now we’ve taken a step back and looked at where our company was,” Andolino explains.

“Our broadloom division is high-end to luxury, and we manufacture with all sorts of yarns and constructions. A lot of that gets turned into custom, made to order rugs, and that is a significant, growing business industry wide.”

Building on its strength in broadloom, the rug group is looking to expand its footprint with upper end flooring retailers. So knowing that our that our sales force is calling on these very high end, very sophisticated dealers we needed to create a rug line that was going to align ourselves better “We have a very powerful seasoned sale force and quite honestly, there was a little bit of disconnect between our area rug sales force and the dealer base that we’re calling on with our sales force relative to the broadloom business.

“And a lot of those dealers we’re calling on for broadloom sell a lot of rugs. But the rugs that they sell are more specialty types of rugs: hand-knotted rugs, more expensive, higher quality – because their account base demands that. They also sell a lot of better-quality fabricated area rugs.

“So, we know that our dealer base, especially on the broadloom side, is accustomed to selling better-end goods. For a while we were hoping that they would also sell our indoor-outdoor and some of our lower-priced products. In reality, these dealers want to sell better goods. This new direction shows that we’re listening to them.”

PROTECTING BRICK & MORTAR CUSTOMERS


Couristan showcases its return to the handmade rug category at its new permanent HPMKT space.

In addition to flooring dealers, Couristan aims to expand its footprint with furniture stores, trade showrooms, and design studios. “Anyone who sells better merchandise and is committed to quality products is our target customer,” Andolino says.

In upscaling the rug division, the company has a mandate to protect its customers. “We’re doing this by protecting them with higher-end hand-knotted products that are being created for the brick-and-mortar dealer base only.

“Our handmade rugs will not be in big boxes; they will not be online on e-commerce sites, so we are protecting the dealers with this better merchandise and we’re stocking sizes which also resonate with what they’re selling. We’re stocking 6x9, 8x10, 9x12 and 10x14. And the beauty of the handmade business is we also can make custom sizes. If a customer loves our patterns and our colors, but wants a custom made (let’s say they want an 11x18), we can make that as a one-off specialty rug.”

HIGH-END HIGH POINT INTROS


Couristan's Desi collection.

At High Point Market, Couristan’s top sellers, all handmade collections, were the new Desi lineup, line extensions to the Elysian range, and the debuting Hamadan collection. Desi is TKTKTTK. The Elysian collection, which debuted in April to rave reviews, is hand-knotted of wool offering a fresh approach to traditional motifs in a high-low Oushak weave. Hamadan rugs are TKTK. In fact, market shoppers witnessed the company’s largest introduction of new product since pre-Covid editions of HPMKT.

“We had a strong launch at High Point. We’ve certainly been introducing more handmade high-end rugs over the last year, but with this new High Point showroom, we took the opportunity to simultaneously launch the showroom and prominently showcase these better end goods,” Andolino said.

LOOKING FORWARD TO 100TH ANNIVERSARY


Featured in the new showroom, this detail of the Couristan history wall, represents a work in progress with photos and
magazine articles tracking major company milestones.

Plans are already underway for a yearlong celebration of Couristan’s 100th anniversary in 2026. At High Point Market, the beginnings of a company history wall were prominently displayed with photos and magazine articles showcasing the company’s deep roots and honoring the pioneers of the company and its past offerings.

“The next year and three months we’ll be working toward our celebration year in 2026. Quite frankly we’re not sure where we are going to land, or what the celebration is going to be. There are not many companies that make it to their 100th anniversary -- that have been continually run by the same family they were founded by. That is the case with the Couri family which is still at the helm of this Couristan. And we are very proud of that fact,” Andolino concludes.