Dollar float makes carpet sales tricky

Press, 20 August 1986, Page 46

Dollar float makes carpet sales tricky

NZPA staff correspondent San Francisco

Currency fluctuations are a “nightmare,” but they have to be lived with, says Mr Tom Parson, vice-president for Bremworth Carpets in the United States.

The hardest thing about doing business in the United States was the fluctuation in the New Zealand dollar value, he said, as Bremworth had a policy of not changing its customer prices to take account of the dollar differences. Mr Parson said that above all he would like to see the dollar stabilise in value.

“It is important that it sits at something rather than goes down,” he said.

“We have a standard price list. We have tried to establish ourselves in America and behave like an American carpet company. “The customers don’t care where the carpet comes from. If it is good, pretty, available and they like it they buy it,” said Mr Parson.

“Just because the dollar changes there is no way we can change the price list. It is what some importers do, particularly those trying to make a quick profit.”

Mr Parson said Bremworth, which aimed its sales at the top 10 to 15

per cent of the home carpet market, had aimed to establish a reputation for “continuity and reliability.”

He said he was sent to the United States six years ago to close the Bremworth North American agency. But he believed after two months that it could be profitable, and it now definitely paid its own way. “In the next year our aim is to sell about SNZIO million worth of carpet,” he said.

The company sells its pure wool product through interior designers and selected upmarket stores such as Macy’s in San Francisco.