21
Sep 09
Posted by Zairo
If your allergies or asthma cause you to think twice about things you bring into your home, reevaluating your flooring options could be beneficial to your health. Many people with allergies are told to remove carpets in the home, but some studies have shown that this may not be the best idea. The Carpet and Rug Institute has found that carpets may be beneficial because they trap allergens until they can be vacuumed up. Carpets and rugs prevent dust and dirt particles from circulating through the air as they do with hard flooring surfaces. Therefore, carpeting can result in fewer allergens in the air above carpeted floors.
The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) says that while carpets do trap particles, much of those can easily be stirred and released back into the air. The AAFA also notes that dust mites can live in carpets, releasing waste materials that can trigger allergy symptoms. For this reason, they recommend bare floors or low-pile or washable rugs for people with allergies.
These conflicting recommendations can make it difficult to make a strong statement in favor of carpet or bare floors. The best advice, if you are prone to allergies but like owning a rug or carpet, is to be sure to vacuum regularly and have your carpet or rug cleaned professionally every 12 to 18 months. Regular cleaning will remove the majority of allergens that remain trapped in the carpet even after vacuuming. Low-pile rugs such as Merida’s textured and flat-weave sisals and flat-woven wools, are preferable for people with allergies because they do not hold as many dust and dirt particles as deep-pile rugs.
Our Parquet rug is a flat-woven sisal design that is preferable for people with allergies.
Our Viewpoint rugs are flat-woven wool designs that do not hold as many dirt and dust particles as deeper-pile rugs.
01
Sep 09
Posted by Zairo
Working at Merida has definitely been a new and exciting experience! I never thought that I would be paid to make patterns, which is one of my favorite hobbies. This summer I created the company’s new business cards which started as actual rug samples. The designs were chosen from some of Merida’s most popular patterns for rugs from their Viewpoint and Tufted Glow Collections. For each design, I outlined the pattern (from the digital rug design) in Illustrator and adjusted the dimensions to fit within each card.
Below are the final graphics - Viewpoint’s Tulip and Dandelion designs, and Glow’s Prism and Refraction designs.
The second major project I worked on was helping create surface designs for Merida’s Hospitality Collection. I was asked to create a range of simple geometrics to organic florals. My first design was inspired by the traditional pinstripe. Making the pinstripe designs were actually the most fun because I could arrange the colors in so many different ways.
- Floral motifs and Pinstripe designs – colors inspired by Merida’s Hospitality color palette
On my last day at Merida, I set up my entire portfolio for Maegan to critique. It was a ton of work. We spent over an hour going through it all! She helped me plan for submitting my portfolio when applying to colleges this Fall. We invited all the Merida employees to come in and view the work I accomplished this summer.
More about the students from Youth Design Boston can be viewed here at youthdesign.org
26
Aug 09
Posted by Bojan
Our friend Phoebe Howard, a wonderfully talented interior designer with storefronts in Atlanta, Charlotte, NC, and Jacksonville and Jacksonville Beach, FL, has recently opened the Mrs. Howard and Max & Company stores in Charlotte, both of which include some of Merida’s natural fiber rugs.
We’re thrilled that Phoebe selected Merida for some of the gorgeous spaces she created here. On her choice of Merida for this high-profile space, Phoebe commented:
“Merida is a company that maintains high standards of excellence, quality of product and customer service, which mirror our values at Mrs. Howard and Max & Company. Merida has been part of our formula for successful decorating, with the same combination of vision and practicality, and we will always look to Merida for great products, both new and classic.” -Phoebe Howard
Check out a few of the photos from the Charlotte store below, and be sure to visit the Mrs Howard Personal Shopper blog for more!
Do you have a photo of a design project featuring a Merida rug? Submit it to marketing@meridameridian.com! If we select your photo, your name and web site will be promoted on our web site!
Our Kyoto sisal rug was used wall-to-wall in many areas of the house, including the living room.
Another shot of the Kyoto rug in the living room
Kyoto sisal rug in the dining room.
Another room in the house used Bahia in Light Honey as a neutral base for more dramatic elements.
Order swatches of Kyoto by clicking here!
Kyoto in Glacier, Locust and Tupelo
26
Aug 09
Posted by Zairo
Last spring, I took a class at MIT called “Sustainability Laboratory (S-Lab)” that gave me the chance to research sustainability in the chocolate market. Our class project was to research and analyze European markets to determine if they are attractive enough for U.S. companies to export to.
This project was very interesting because I was able to learn a lot about fair trade. Below is a chart showing the historic trend of the fair trade market in the UK. Even though coffee and bananas, which have relatively long histories as fair trade products, are a large part of the fair trade market, other categories, including chocolate, show stable growth.
Sales of fair trade certified products in the UK
The MIT teams used three criteria to evaluate the attractiveness of the fair trade chocolate market:
1. Fair trade consumption per capita
2. Chocolate consumption per capita
3. Fair trade retail value of each country
We used the chart below to integrate these three criteria. On the X axis is chocolate consumption per capita. Countries with higher chocolate consumption have more attractive markets. On the Y axis is fair trade consumption per capita, which shows each country’s tendency toward fair trade products. Countries with higher fair trade consumption have more attractive markets. The bubble size denotes the fair trade retail value. Countries with larger bubbles have stronger potential to sell fair-trade-related products.
From the above chart, we found that the UK, Germany, and Switzerland are very attractive in the European market. However, we also found that the U.S. market is prominent and attractive and has substantial growth potential. This finding was surprising for me. I had thought European countries were far ahead of the U.S. in terms of sustainability, but it turns out there is already a large market for fair trade in the U.S. What I learned from this is that companies should not target their sustainability products only to European countries but to the U.S. market as well.
-Koji Omiya
