Rizzy Home asked a trick question to its customers at High Point Market last month. "Is it hand-made, or machine-made?" The answer: "Yes!" That affirmative means Rizzy Home's new hybrid collection - segemented into three rug styles - is both. "We make these machine-made rugs at one of our facilities in India, and then we transport them 700 miles to be finished by hand by our team of artisans at our hand-knotting facility - that is where we have the capacity to do this," Larry Hedrick, VP of business development, told HTT. "It is a process that is extremely difficult for anyone else to do this like we have, and that is because we are third-generation hand-knot rug experts. What we've developed are unique rugs." He said he should know: "I've been working for the past 38 years in the area rug industry. It's all I've ever done." Made of New Zealand wool, the hybrid collection encompasses three rug styles ranked "good, better and best" - Gossamer, Impressions and Artistry -and finished by artisans who carve and/or serge and then wash each rug by hand. Hedrick observed earlier attempts by competitors to create hybrids. "There was a Chinese product that came out a few years ago that had the edges done by hand," he recalled. "But no one has ever washed by hand, carved by hand and finished by hand the way we have been able to with this truly hybrid collection that is 50% machine-made, 50% handmade. The industry has never seen this handiwork, never to this level, on a machine-made rug until now. This is a very mature industry, and it's hard to come out with something this different. But we did it."
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