Four Firms Join RugMark To End Child Labor

Washington, DC, April 22, 2008--Four rug companies from the U.S. and Canada recently teamed with RugMark to help put an end to exploitive child labor in the handmade rug industry.

The Nought Collective, notNeutral, Creative Matters and Rug Art are now licensees of non-profit RugMark, an independent inspection and monitoring program that confirms rugs are manufactured without the use of child labor and provides educational opportunities for children in India and Nepal.

Donna Hastings and Carol Sebert of Creative Matters provide Nepalese hand knotted wool, nettle and silk carpets to clients as diverse as the Canadian Embassy in Paris to a chic nightclub in Tokyo. Hastings’ and Sebert’s love of carpets, they explain, has to do with their beauty and their character, which, in part, comes from the people who make them. The women say their customers care about rug weavers as well. “We get asked a lot if the rugs are made by children,” explains Hastings. “It’s nice to say we’re with RugMark. It gives our clients confidence in our work.”

According to notNeutral’s CEO, Julie Smith, creating children’s rugs, a one year-old project, was a natural addition to their home décor and kids’ divisions. Since most modern design rugs focus on an adult market, notNeutral took on the challenge of creating kids’ rugs, says Smith, “that are neither cutesy nor character-driven.”

NotNeutral has worked with children’s products for years and concern for children’s well-being was a given, says Smith, “so we wouldn’t have even started making rugs without RugMark. She also pointed out that as a small company notNeutral didn’t have the oversight that large companies do so, she explained, “For us, an organization like Rugmark is the best assurance that a rug is child-labor-free.”