We recently connected with Alia Kate and have shared our conversation below.

Alia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Covid has brought about so many changes – has your business model changed?

The pandemic changed a lot of things for Kantara. On the one hand, it brought my tour company, Kantara Tours, to an utter standstill. I had just launched the tour side of the business in 2019 and was gearing up to have a heavy travel season in 2020. By early March 2020, it was clear that there would be no travel for the foreseeable future. All my tours were canceled and Morocco had closed its borders. Luckily, Kantara Tours was the spin-off from Kantara Rugs, my fair trade Moroccan rug business and I had something that I could pivot to focus on while the world was hibernating.

At that point, Kantara Rugs operated as an e-commerce business with no physical showroom. Within a few months, I joined forces with another local rug dealer, King Kennedy Rugs, and together, we launched our first brick and mortar location in Los Angeles. At a time when many other businesses were shuttering their doors and trying to figure out how to make online sales work, we were going in the opposite direction of turning our online businesses into a physical storefront. It’s now been three years since the showroom first opened and I can’t imagine running my business without it.

Alia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started importing Moroccan rugs in 2008 after meeting dozens of women weavers throughout Morocco. I fell in love with their rugs, the craftsmanship involved in weaving, and the stories embedded within the rugs. At that time, the artisans had very little means to get their rugs to a larger market without relying on exploitative middlemen who would underpay them for the rugs. These middlemen would then go on to resell the rugs at incredibly steep prices in tourist markets. The artisans rarely saw any of the money that tourists paid for the rugs.

I wanted to change this cycle, so I started Kantara, which means “bridge” in Arabic. The goal was to be an ethical bridge between buyers in the US and artisans in Morocco, oftering a way to purchase directly from the artisans. Now, 15 years later, the business has evolved. We have an e-commerce store and a showroom in Los Angeles where we have over 100 rugs in stock that we source from weaving cooperatives throughout Morocco. Our inventory is a mix of new and vintage, but I’m most proud of our custom-designed Moroccan rugs. Placing an order for a new rug is not only one of the best ways to support artisans in real time, but it’s also a way to enter into a creative conversation with artisans halfway around the world.

Most of the Oversized rugs in our collection are the result of custom orders. We also do dozens of custom designs for clients every year when they want to replicate a rug but in a different size or colorway. And finally, in 2020 we launched the Designers x Kantara series that features custom rugs that were woven in collaboration between the Moroccan artisans and US-based artists and designers.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The most important pivot of my career happened during Covid. I went from focusing all of my energy on running custom and 2-week tours in Morocco to opening a brick and mortar and ramping up my stock of Moroccan rugs. It created an incredible opportunity for me to start stocking up on larger rugs and start pulling in more rugs that represented a wider variety of styles. Before I opened the showroom, I played it relatively safe and only ordered rugs that I knew would sell. Once I had more space to play with, I started experimenting with different styles of rugs. I also branched out into new collections, such as the Designers x Kantara collection. This year I launched a Buy Back Program as a way to invest in a more circular economy and keep Moroccan rugs out of the landfill. I would have never been able to do all of this without having a dedicated showroom.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I’m trying to unlearn the idea that infinite growth is possible. This is a myth that undergirds all of our society. It’s in the media we consume, the things we teach our young folks, and the dreams we harbor for the future. When I got my MBA, infinite growth was the gospel that drove our curriculum. We learned how to maximize profit and extract value.

And yet, we live on a finite planet with finite resources. While some industries are already feeling the pinch as resources become more scarce, I believe that in the coming decade, no industry will be left unaffected. There’s a whole field of studies that is dedicated to degrowth and post-growth economies and I’m doing the work to understand what that might look like for my business. I’m still in the process of unlearning this lesson and welcome anyone else who finds themselves on this path to reach out!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kantararugs.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moroccanrugs
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/moroccorugs
• Other: The links above are for the Kantara Rugs. Kantara Tours socials are: www.kantaratours.com https://www.instagram.com/kantaramorocco https://www.facebook.com/kantaramorocco

Image Credits
Mikael Kennedy Anna Beeke