Thirty-five years at the loom.
A small workshop of weavers in 1991. Today, 120 artisans, 40 countries, and still the same rule — every rug is made by hand, by people we know by name.
Sheeltex India was founded in 1991 — one workshop, a handful of weavers, and a quiet conviction that the slow craft of handmade rugs was worth keeping alive. Three and a half decades on, that’s still the work.
The first export shipment left for the UK seven years later. By 2005, our rugs were in ten countries. By 2015, the workshop had grown to fifty artisans, all in-house — no subcontracting, no shortcuts. Today, more than 120 weavers, dyers, and finishers work on the floor every day, and our containers ship to 40+ markets across Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and East Asia.
The company is run today by Vivek Sheel, partner at Sheeltex — second generation, hands-on, on the floor. The leadership is new; the standard is not. Every rug still passes five quality gates before it leaves the workshop. Every dye lot is matched against a sealed reference. Every finished piece is checked against a tolerance of ±2 percent. The phone still gets picked up when a buyer calls.
Four convictions that shape every container we ship.
01We believe in things that last.
A handmade rug should outlive its owner, then their children, then their grandchildren. We use natural fibres because they age beautifully; we knot at full density because shortcuts show up in year three. If you’re buying from us, you’re buying decades.
02Craft is a relationship.
Every weaver on our floor is in-house, on payroll, with health cover and a name we know. We refuse to subcontract — not as a marketing claim, but because quality control over a long supply chain is a lie, and we’d rather just do the work ourselves.
03Indian heritage is a worldview, not a decoration.
We don’t borrow motifs and call them ours. We make rugs the way India has made textiles for centuries — pit loom, frame loom, hand-knotted, dyed in vats — and we translate those techniques into the language each buyer’s market understands.
04A quiet email beats a loud sales pitch.
You’ll never get hard-sold by us. Tell us what your market wants, we’ll send honest pricing, an honest timeline, and a pre-production sample. If it’s right for you, we begin. If it isn’t, we part as friends and you keep our catalogue.
1991 to now.
Thirty-five years measured in containers, certifications, and people on the floor.
A look around the floor.
Yarn arrives, dye is matched, looms run from morning to evening, finished pieces are hand-inspected. Nothing about this is mechanised. That’s the point.
Pit loom · weaving in progress
Dye-lot matching against a sealed reference
Weave tension check
Dimensional verification — tolerance ±2%
Hand finishing — the final pass
After thirty-five years, the loom still teaches us something new every week. The day we stop learning is the day we stop weaving.
The non-negotiables.
Four commitments we’d rather lose a buyer than break.
Women’s leadershipConfident decision-makers on the floor.
Skill-building, fair wages, leadership pathways for women on our workshop floor and in surrounding villages. Not a programme — the way the place runs.
Anti child-labourZero, audited, and we say no.
A child-labour-free supply chain isn’t a checkbox. We partner with local authorities, schools, and parents across the wider Indian textile industry to keep it that way and to keep kids in school.
Sustainable practiceOEKO-TEX dyes. On-site wastewater treatment.
GOTS organic cotton and jute options. AZO-free natural-dye recipes. Daylight looms, LED-only lighting. Carbon-neutral shipping on request. We treat sustainability as a cost-saving discipline, not a slogan.
Healthcare & safetyHealthcare for every person on the floor.
Health cover. Sanitation. A safe place to work and a quiet place to eat lunch. The team is the reason we’re here — looking after them is the job.
40+ countries. One craft.
We respond to wholesale inquiries within 24 hours.
Tell us what your market needs. We’ll send a tiered price list, MOQ details, and a pre-production sample timeline the same week.
