Comment by supermatt
I can’t speak for the rugs you viewed, but some products take literally hundreds of man hours to make.
My partner recently picked up some fine crochet bedspreads. These intricate bedspreads each must have consumed multiple weeks of labour. I understand this is also true of hand crafted Chinese and Afghan rugs - around a month per square metre for an Afghan.
In contrast, those basketball shoes you collect are mass produced and apparently consume around 3 hours of direct labour. You could have many tens or even hundreds of those basketball shoes for the labour value of a moderately size Afghan rug.
Mentioning the man hours would make sense, if the ones producing the product taking the majority cut from the purchase price.
Otherwise, it's more of a strategy to set a higher price tag, and the reseller and all the middleman taking all the extra revenues.