Faisal Shaikh
Twenty-Eight (28) years of experience in manufacturing and export of hand-made carpet in Pakistan. I am the second generation of Mehmoodian & Iran Carpets family in this business since 1962.
Education:
Having degrees of Masters in Business Administration – MBA (1996) with major in marketing and MIS and Masters in Computer Science – MCS (1999) and advance skills in GUI designing and database architectural web development.
I am having expertise of specialized in making any picture converted into carpet manufacture by man made and keeping knowledge of history of rugs and carpets from Kurdish, Persian, Turkish, Russian and Mughals. I am member of “KNOWING MY RUG” platform where people discuss about the carpet design and relate them with the history or man-kind. I can see weaving and can tell approximate era of the rug manufactured into and estimated age of the rug.
Journey of Arshad’s Oriental & Bokhara Carpets – Pakistan (2003 – till date)
My journey started in 1996 when while studying I joined my Father (Mr. Arshad Shaikh) who was manufacturing carpets for a Japanese company and my home tuition started with knowing color combinations, local language of weavers, hand designing, writing programing language of carpet weaving and finishing processes of a raw carpet. Second stage was about learning communication skills with the foreign companies and third stage of learning was export procedures.
During my traveling to many countries like Turkey, India, Europe and UAE, I learned history of many rugs and enhanced myself by learning how world is making flooring covered with suitable rugs and color matching with the living areas of their home, office etc., I learned about trending of the designers world also.
Then in 2001, after my father passed away, I got carpet inventory inherited with much of production footsteps, many clients and much of family goodwill in market. I made my current company “Arshad’s Oriental and Bokhara Carpets” in 2023 and started with knowing in market with this name which made myself famous as Bokhara Carpets – Pakistan.
My interest in information technology and my related education allowed me to learn and invent latest techniques of making carpet designing, programing for weavers, coding and record keeping of carpet productions.
I have many clients in the world ordering my company custom made designs and sizes, they provide us an imaginative or picture based impression and approve color scheme of wool which allow us to design carpets on computer first and then a programmed language is written for weavers to make the rug which looks close to their demand after weaving, we consider every carpet as a project and keeps its history and footsteps of its making for the record.
Company has been taking part in many trade shows mostly middle east and Europe, where most of the buyers and sellers from the world are coming and discussing their ideas, market trends and new inventions, customers takes interest in our production and place orders. Our production profile is available for review.
Designing innovation and using technology for the record keeping was the invention my company made in the carpet trade. Giving program identical ID to the design and smartly deriving new design from three previously designed rugs was the made idea. First phase analysis of the requirement coming from client is always important whereas PERT analysis of the project to keep the timeline realistic is also kept on priority while making rugs.
We make sure to use adult labor, give them welfare and good salaries and education to their families. On top of this we always ask our weavers to give one or two of their family members training on our expense, this makes our trade alive and fresh blood keep injected in this work.
Our client support and customer relationship management is totally computer based. We keep our client buying records and give them support where they stuck or needs repair in old stock. We also made a system where periodical buying of every client gives them auto generated emails and inform them about our new production and stock levels to keep them attached with our innovations and R&D.