Shepherd Twist from Balta Carpets

Shepherd Twist from Balta has been with us now for several years and this is at least its third or maybe fourth relaunch.

One of the better man-made twists around, Shepherd does come close to the look and feel of wool, at least with customers. We have regularly had excellent feedback from customers over the years and have had quite a few customers buy it after moving house – repeat Shepherd Twisters!

One thing that Balta have always done with this carpet is to avoid reducing the pile weight from the near-perfect 45oz – instead they have simply put up the price when they needed to. After the last 18 months of recession and awful exchange rate problems however, I was worried about the new release. I do have some justification now in that the pile weight has been cut down to 42oz – still pretty good for a carpet of this type and still recommended by me. They have cut the price by £1 per square metre to retailers, so I would say that this carpet will find the £10-£15 per square metre price band.

One new additional benefit is that it finally comes in both 4 metre and 5 metre widths – that was long overdue.

The colours are very much a plethora of natural shades once more. Beiges and creams still dominate but the best-selling ‘Mocha’ shade is continued. I think around 8 or 9 of the shades are carried forward and we see some newcomers – a dark red, a dark grey and we see the blue disappearing along with the bright red. I’m surprised at the bright red being dropped as we are selling a fair amount of that shade right now.

I’d certainly continue to recommend this carpet. Yes, the pile weight has dropped slightly, and that is a pity, but it still outperforms many competitors of this type. It handles and fits superbly and at this price there is no doubt that is represents excellent value for money.

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Funky Colours from Balta Carpets: Funky Stripes

Striped carpet has become very popular over the last year or so, particularly in the higher end carpet world. Kersaint Cobb’s lovely ‘Beach Hut’ and Crucial Trading’s ‘Mississippi’ and ‘Audrey’ have defintely made their mark.

The lower end has been starved of anything fun and funky like that until now with Balta releasing an intriguing looking new range called ‘Funky Stripes’ in a lightish weight poylpropylene (around 18oz I beleive) and on a felt back:

As you can see, it’s vibrant and has a clear accent on ‘fun’ to help the limping ‘funonthefloor’ campaign. It looks like a dead cert seller to me for kids’ bedrooms and at a retail price of £8-£12 per metre, it should find a healthy place in the market.

We are selling a whole lot more in the way of colour this year, with ranges like ‘Fusion’ by Balta and ‘Carousel’ by Condor doing especially well for us – noticeably in kids’ rooms.

Interestingly we are also beginning to notice that customers are coming in to carpet their ‘games room’. Often youngish couples who buy a house with more bedrooms than they need seek to turn one of them into what is essentially a play room for adults to Wii, XBox or generally pretend they are  still kids! Nice work if you can get it and I’ve already recommended some nice carpet to customers who use Wii Fit (laminate may well prove harsh on hips and knee joints in the long run!) extensively – oh how the trade has changed!

Anyway, back to this carpet. We are still waiting to see the full colour bank, but let’s hope the promotion material supplied so far is just a taste of better things. Well done Balta I say.

Harrogate Show is now on by the way (biggest national flooring show) and I’m not there. To all who are attending, have fun and don’t forget to bag enough free pens to last you through the year.

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