Toland salutes home with new area rugs

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 5/8/2002 12:00:00 AM

Mandeville, LA — Decorative flag manufacturer Toland has added 3' x 5' area rugs to its product mix, representing just one of the company's many upcoming efforts to expand into more home textiles categories.

Toland, which originated as a flag manufacturer 25 years ago, added kitchen comfort mats to its line in January 1996.

Now Toland is looking to build on the soft as well as hard goods home categories.

"Home seems to be a good category, based on all the people buying new homes and fixing them up these days and spending more time at home entertaining rather than going out," Jim Jacobs, director of marketing, told HTT. "There's a big market out there for home goods, and we want to make sure we keep providing products for it in more and more categories."

The area rugs, currently available only in the 3' x 5' size, are made of 100 percent polyester in a needle-punch technology and feature a waffle-rubber non-slip back.

Toland's launch line of area rugs is available in 30 styles, most of which feature licensed designs by various artists. None of the rugs currently coordinate with any of Toland's flags or comfort mats, but Jacobs said the goal is to eventually match up some of the products across categories.

All the rugs are manufactured by Toland at its headquarters here, where the company also produces all of its flags and comfort mats.

Retail price points are set at $50, with the line catering to independent gift, specialty and home decor stores, said Jacobs, the latter representing a new customer for the company.