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Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Advisory Service Project & Watershed Management Project
Potential of Small-Scale Income Generating Activities: Contribution to Rural Development, Part 3
Raid N. Al Baqain, Ph.D, June, 1999
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit
(GTZ)
Weaving rugs is one of the most traditional hand work of the rural Jordan. This job was more attached to both rural as well as the Bedouin women. This work was inherited since hundred of years, however less people are using this craft at present. The weaving art of rugs is used mostly more for tourism rather than household purposes. People at cities depend now on other alternatives like carpets.
In Jordan there is a distinctive project that deals with rugs production called Bani Hamida project. This project tries to revive this craft within the rural women in Bani Hamida mountain south of Madaba. The high quality of production helped in the marketing process and even to be exported. They make many traditional patterns and many newer, more experimental patterns being worked. There were new designs of patterns so as to match people tastes and preferences. This professional work, which now internationally is known, came after several years of hard work.
The traditional way of making rugs is through the use of the ground loom. Women have to spent long time in order to make one piece of rug. Rugs is usually made of sheep wool. The men had to shear the wool from sheep and then wash it and prepare it for spinning. Then the women use a spindle to produce the wool to be ready for weaving. This process is becoming costly and reflected in rug prices which use the local wool. At the rugs market nowadays, there are different types of wool used in weaving rugs. First the local wool, then imported wool (manufactured by machines in Turkey) and imported Egyptian wool. In addition there is a process of reusing the wool of clothes. The women at the villages use the wool of old clothes and send them to the weavers to make a rug with for an amount of money.
Traditional rug industry faces many problems, rug makers said. They continued saying that the Jordanian traditional weaving is going to be vanished soon. Rugs is made mainly now for tourism purposes. The people in the rural areas and villages posses rugs made by weavers but less than the old times. People start to use ready carpet with different colors and designs from the markets, thus less traditional hand made rugs.
Rugs are normally done in different sizes and traditional designs depending on the buyers preferences. In the analysis here, we did the economic analysis (gross margin) for 1 m2 of rug. The value of gross margin for a hand-made rugs is nearly 14 JD/1 m2 (see table 1). Here the average price was used as an indicator, since there is a high variation in sale price. We need to mention that nowadays the weavers use the upright loom instead of the ground loom. We found during our visits that the upright loom has a standard wide ranging between 90 cm to 100 cm, while the length is open to be decided by the buyer. In addition to that, there are rug makers who buy the finished wool and use it directly in weaving. While others buy the unprocessed sheep wool from the animal owners and go through a long process until the wool is ready for use. The latter, therefore is more costly and reflected on the price of the final
product
Table 1: Gross margin analysis (in JD) for a traditional hand made rug (size 1 m2)
| N=10 |
Amount |
Price in JD |
Total in JD |
| Total Return in JD |
|
|
|
| Sold Rug (one m2) |
1 |
37.12 |
37.12 |
| |
|
|
|
| Cost |
|
|
|
| Wool (cross-legged) |
2.25 |
6.5 |
14.63 |
| Wool (base-legged) |
0.5 |
2.5 |
1.25 |
| Labor cost for 1 m2 rug
(weaving cost) |
|
|
6.33 |
| others (transportation, finishing
etc.) |
|
|
1.00 |
| |
|
|
|
| Total variable cost |
|
|
23.21 |
| |
|
|
|
| Gross margin in JD |
|
|
13.92 |
Wool, depending on its source, is the main component of the variable cost comprising around 68% of the total variable cost. In the analysis here, we considered the local wool (cross-legged) as basic material in weaving rugs. The wool for base-legged is an another type of wool and thus has lower price 2.5 JD/kg. As for labor cost, it has been found in many cases that weavers charges a certain amount of money for making 1
m2 of rug. There is a wide range of labor cost between the weavers depending on nationality and quality of the work. At the Jordanian rugs market, the Egyptian weavers are not few. In Karak city for example, there are at least 5-6 weavers controlling the market. They sell the 1
m2 rug with 15 JD and take only 5 JD as labor cost (nearly one day work).
A meeting with some Jordanian traditional weavers in Madaba city has been carried out. According to the rugs producers, they named many obstacles that stands in the way of this traditional industry to succeed and flourish. These obstacles can be divided into 2 aspects. The first deals with the laborers who make the rugs and the second concerning dumping process and unfair
competition.
At the Jordanian market, there are many foreign weavers. According to the traditional rug makers, those weavers do a low quality rugs with a low quality of wool (using the wool from the old and used pullovers). This on the long run will bring a bad reputation to the Jordanian traditional rugs. On the other side, the foreign weavers responded that they are reacting to the market situation. They do rug according to the purchasing power which exist at the market. Besides, most of there work is to make rugs for others (for orders). This means that people bring wool to the weavers who in turn make the rugs and charge people on the size of the rug (only the cost of his labor).
Dumping the market with imported rugs (From Iraq, Syria and other countries) with lower prices. According to the Jordanian weavers, the tourists do not recognize the differences between the local and the imported rug. Therefore, the tourists chose at the end the cheapest one. In addition there are many handicraft's shops which suffers from the unfair behavior of the guides of the tourist groups. This important subject, as we mentioned before, has an essential impact on all handicraft activities. The guides bring his group only to those who pay the highest commission (reach to 40 % of the total sale price) bringing the prices to its extreme level. As mentioned previously, this problem is common for all crafts production .
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