Carpet and furniture maker Abdullah and Nasser Alsorayai Co has had a long tradition of making carpets.

Thanks to expertise gained over a period of 65 years, the company is today a respected name in its field not only in its home base of Saudi Arabia but also across several continents where its products have been used.
Most output is consumed within the country itself, some 65 per cent. If it wished, Alsorayai could have sold the entire production within the kingdom, but it prefers to let a portion go overseas for, as company CEO Saleh Nasser Al Sorayai puts it, “strategic reasons.”
There is a huge demand locally and we are still one of the main players in the GCC market,” says Saleh. Explaining why the company was popular, he says: “We use the latest technology in the textile business…and we are trying to follow the market now. We have very qualified personnel to run the business and to position ourselves as an international brand as well.”
The company’s factories are in Jeddah. It makes its own yarn and uses locally manufactured raw material, which Saleh says gives the company a competitive advantage. Expertise born of long years in the business gives another dimension to the competitive advantage.
Alsorayai has had a progressive run. The company is a family business established in the 1940s by Saleh’s father and uncle. The company originally dealt with hand-made Persian carpets with its base in Riyadh. Later the business moved to Makkah. In the holy city, it continued importing hand-made carpets from Iran, but also built up stocks with consignments from India and Pakistan. As people who wanted to sell used carpets approached the company, it opened a second-hand carpets line.
At some stage after that, the company imported carpet-making machinery and in time excelled as one of the main distributors of machine-made carpets in Saudi Arabia.
Next step in the progress was the introduction of wall-to-wall carpets in the early 1960s, and in time Alsorayai served as sole agent for the big companies.
Having succeeded mightily in the trading of carpets, Alsorayai mulled the question of opening up a manufacturing line. However, before it could actually begin making machine-made carpets, the company diversified into the upholstery business and blankets. By the middle of the 1980s it established its own manufacturing units in Jeddah.
Currently, the company performs both weaving and tufting operations and exports have reached the sophisticated markets of the US, Australia and Europe.
Metallic furniture dominates production of furniture at Alsorayai. Imports of wooden furniture are higher than the volumes manufactured by the company. The company imports furniture from all over the world, mainly China, the US, the Far East and a little from Africa. China dominates the market in medium-high quality.   
The company is considering expanding its carpets business outside the region, either in China or Africa.
It has joint ventures in specialised fields but would like to concentrate on its core activities of carpets and furniture, says Saleh.