ABC PUZZLE RUG

The 2009 Report on Punched and Needled Stitch-Bonded Wool Felts and Manmade Fiber Felts Excluding Carpet and Rugs Suitable for Outdoor Use and All Hats: World Market Segmentation by City

This report was created for global strategic planners who cannot be content with traditional methods of segmenting world markets. With the advent of a "borderless world", cities become a more important criteria in prioritizing markets, as opposed to regions, continents, or countries. This report covers the top 2000 cities in over 200 countries. It does so by reporting the estimated market size (in terms of latent demand) for each major city of the world. It then ranks these cities and reports them in terms of their size as a percent of the country where they are located, their geographic region (e.g. Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, North America, Latin America), and the total world market.

In performing various economic analyses for its clients, I have been occasionally asked to investigate the market potential for various products and services across cities. The purpose of the studies is to understand the density of demand within a country and the extent to which a city might be used as a point of distribution within its region. From an economic perspective, however, a city does not represent a population within rigid geographical boundaries. To an economist or strategic planner, a city represents an area of dominant influence over markets in adjacent areas. This influence varies from one industry to another, but also from one period of time to another.

In what follows, I summarize the economic potential for the world's major cities for "punched and needled stitch-bonded wool felts and manmade fiber felts excluding carpet and rugs suitable for outdoor use and all hats" for the year 2009. The goal of this report is to report my findings on the real economic potential, or what an economist calls the latent demand, represented by a city when defined as an area of dominant influence. The reader needs to realize that latent demand may or may not represent real sales.

The Persian carpet is an essential part of Persian (Iranian) art and culture. Carpet-weaving is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished manifestations of Persian culture and art, and dates back to the Bronze Age.

The earliest surviving corpus of Persian carpets come from the Safavid dynasty (1501-1736) in the 16th century. However, painted depictions prove a longer history of production. There is much variety among classical Persian carpets of the 16th and 17th century. Common motifs include scrolling vine networks, arabesques, palmettes, cloud bands, medallions, and overlapping geometric compartments rather than animals and humans. This is because Islam, the dominant religion in that part of the world, forbids their depiction. Still, some show figures engaged either in the hunt or feasting scenes. The majority of these carpets are wool, but several silk examples produced in Kashan survive

An Afghan woman weaves a traditional carpet, with wool from her family's sheep, on a handmade loom, in Ghor province, in central Afghanistan.

This econometric study covers the latent demand outlook for punched and needled stitch-bonded wool felts and manmade fiber felts excluding carpet and rugs suitable for outdoor use and all hats across the prefectures and cities of Japan. Latent demand (in millions of U.S. dollars), or potential industry earnings (P.I.E.) estimates are given across some 1,000 cities in Japan. For each city in question, the percent share the city is of it's prefecture and of Japan is reported. These comparative benchmarks allow the reader to quickly gauge a city vis-a-vis others. This statistical approach can prove very useful to distribution and/or sales force strategies. Using econometric models which project fundamental economic dynamics within each prefecture and city, latent demand estimates are created for punched and needled stitch-bonded wool felts and manmade fiber felts excluding carpet and rugs suitable for outdoor use and all hats. This report does not discuss the specific players in the market serving the latent demand, nor specific details at the product level. The study also does not consider short-term cyclicalities that might affect realized sales. The study, therefore, is strategic in nature, taking an aggregate and long-run view, irrespective of the players or products involved.

This study does not report actual sales data (which are simply unavailable, in a comparable or consistent manner in virtually all of the cities in Japan). This study gives, however, my estimates for the latent demand, or the P.I.E., for punched and needled stitch-bonded wool felts and manmade fiber felts excluding carpet and rugs suitable for outdoor use and all hats in Japan. It also shows how the P.I.E. is divided and concentrated across the cities and regional markets of Japan. For each prefecture, I also show my estimates of how the P.I.E. grows over time. In order to make these estimates, a multi-stage methodology was employed that is often taught in courses on strategic planning at graduate schools of business.