Oriental Weavers Group reorganizes, rebrands hospitality division

Home Textiles Today Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 9/28/2010 1:10:37 PM

Cairo, Egypt -- Oriental Weavers Group is reorganizing and rebranding its hospitality carpet and rug company, Cambridge Weavers Ltd., to include new styles of soft floor coverings to its product assortment as well as a revamped name and logo, and an expanded team force to expand its U.S. business.

Cambridge Weavers, which also operates in the United States as C.W. Hospitality, is adding hand-tufted, machine-tufted and printed qualities of custom area rugs and carpets to its roster, which already includes Axminster products for hotels, casinos and cruise ships around the world.

The aim is for the company to "truly become a full-service hospitality and contract source" within the hospitality industry, Oriental Weavers Group said.

Revamping its image, this hospitality division will now be known as OW Hospitality. The company will be launching the new logo, a color pom box, and the entire global brand story in its expanded show space at the Domotex 2011 show in Hanover as well as at the 2011 Hospitality Design Expo in Las Vegas.

"In order to utilize global assets and take advantage of the organization's worldwide corporate structure and management team, we have decided to fully integrate the operation under the same management structure currently in place for all other flooring related businesses," said Mohamed Farid Khamis, Egyptian industrialist and the company's chairman. "The assets and synergies of our many other floor covering operations in the Oriental Weavers should be fully utilized to provide the best possible offerings and service to the worldwide hospitality market."

OW Hospitality is currently adding significant capacity to its operations here with the installment of eight new, high-speed axminster looms - creating more than 900,000 square meters in annual production capacity. This expansion is slated to be completed by early 2011.

"The company's new strategy and global branding effort for OW Hospitality will allow the company to operate seamlessly around the globe as one organization to better serve the hospitality market worldwide," Khamis continued.

The company also intends to soon add the same high-speed looms to its production unit in China.

OW Hospitality has also made new investments to expand its design, planning and sales staff worldwide, as OW Hospitality's staffing support spans offices in Cairo, Dubai, London, and the United States.

The largest structural changes for OW Hospitality are taking place in the U.S., where the company has merged its domestic hospitality sales unit (C.W. Hospitality) with Oriental Weavers USA under the global brand name, OW Hospitality.

Oriental Weavers Group, already well established in the hospitality markets throughout Asia, Europe, and the Middle East over its 25-year history, is now turning its attention to its U.S. infrastructure and resources for growth in the market.

Michael Riley, president of Oriental Weavers USA, said "the integration and consolidation of another OW category and brand within our organization is absolutely a natural progression and will allow us to better support the existing hospitality sales and marketing group in the U.S. while also providing full design support services to many U.S. firms with projects overseas. We now truly have the ability to manage projects and provide one face to our partners around the world."