Rug Rage

Instagram | @rugrage

At the end of 2020 I decided to pursue a hobby I had been admiring from a distance for a while: rug-making. I started working on rugs using the punch-needle technique and transitioned to using a tufting gun. This hobby has been a great opportunity for me to showcase my creativity and technical skills, such as textile arts and wood-working, as well as allowing me to implement my own marketing and PR strategies to spread the word about my business (perfect practice for a marketing student like myself 😉). Because of this, I would love to share some of my thought process behind what I have done and share the success I have seen from these decisions.

Branding

For branding my business, I decided to pick an aesthetic popular with my target audience (college students), leaning towards a simple grainy gradient for my logo and leveraging a vintage feel with a retro font. I also chose the name "Rug Rage" as a play on the phrase "Road Rage," therefore, I decided to pick a color scheme that was a bit aggressive with reds, oranges, and hot pinks. Below you can find both the logo and color scheme.

Rug Rage logo

Branding color scheme

Public Relations

I have enjoyed marketing my own business by leveraging the support of my community and giving back. To do this, I made rugs for key members of the Babson community who have helped me with my business or who I value, such as the Weissman Foundry and Roger the Babson dog. These accounts posted about my work which helped me gain exposure on campus as they each have over 1000 followers.

I was also reposted on major rug-making community accounts such as @imakerugs (68.5k followers) and @rugs.jpeg (11.4k followers). Below are the posts they made.

Marketing and Visuals

As for other marketing tactics I have employed, I organized a giveaway, which was also highly successful and made videos and posts that people reacted to positively. Though I did not have many followers when I started the giveaway, I gained many followers from the giveaway and had 259 entries. This was also reposted by over 40 people in their personal Instagram stories. As for video/story content, I used popular audios and aesthetics I have seen on TikTok and received positive comments and garnered interest since many people messaged me to ask how they can order a rug.

If you are interested in learning more about my back story and interest in this hobby, head to the Weissman Foundry's page here and read the blog entry I wrote for them.

Below are a few rugs I have made, see more and behind the scenes here.