Picture this: you're walking down a street, getting shouted
at in different languages, then the voice settles on English. You hear "Yes please.
Beautiful carpet. Best prices. Please come in."
Once you're inside, you are beckoned to sit down and are
offered apple tea, orange tea, or coffee. One person starts by asking you what you know
about carpets, sumaks, and kilims. If you are a newcomer to this pastime, you will be
given an education on the history of the craft and the various techniques. Then someone
silently appears with your hot drink of choice, served to you on a silver tray. Then one
to three other people suddenly appear from the sides, and roll out carpet after carpet,
waiting for "oooh's and ahh's" much like a group of people gazing at fireworks
on the Fourth of July.
It seems as if the supply of carpets is endless in a shop
about as large as a small bedroom. Finally after exhausting their entire inventory,
you may vote on each carpet with either a "yes" or a "no". All
the "yes" carpets are brought back in front of you to help you decide on the
ones you like the best. Up until this point, cost has not been mentioned. That means
the fun part is just beginning.
For those of you who have purchased a new or used car, or
shopped for a wedding dress, the experience is exactly the same. The sales person
starts off with a very high price to weed out the naive shoppers who have fallen in love
with their carpet and just say, "I'll take it!".
We always started by complaining how we really didn't want a
carpet and there was none that we really liked but would possibly be interested in one
(the one we really liked) for about half the cost. The negotiation would go back and
forth with the salesperson having to go back to talk with the owner several times and
always coming back with a price they couldn't believe they were offering. Then we
would get up to leave which would then bring the price down again and again.
In one rather nasty store, we received the "good copy,
bad cop" routine where the owner kept coming down with the price and the son would
argue out loud that is was too low and they were losing money. It reminded us of a
Saturday Night Live skit relating to the Home Shopping Channel where one person would
reduce the price and the other person kept shouting, "No!, You can't do that!, That's
too low!"
The Exceptions:
Of course not all carpet shops were like this and Lily's
employer Outback Carpets was one of the exceptions. It was a very relaxed atmosphere
and we still felt we bargained very hard. But we never encountered the distasteful
"hard-sell". Lily and co. seemed just as friendly to us when we left the
store the first day without buying anything than when we returned later to buy
one. We enjoyed talking with Lily so much, and thought she was so fascinating that we
added her to our People Page.
Another nice store and (we felt) trustworthy owner was
Mehmet from Sultan Carpets in Goreme, recommended to us by Myrna, better known as Go
Global Girl. We found a kilim for our friends Carrie and Eric here, and took footage of
Mehmet explaining the symbolism of the design.
The carpet shop ritual is not to be missed; either for
entertainment value or serious shoppers. If could definitely be considered part of the
culture of getting to know Turkey.
