Wool Academy with Elisabeth van Delden

Victor Chesky is a lifelong wool industry journalist and publisher of Wool2Yearn Global, Wool2Yarn China, Woolnews.net as well as woolbuy.net. Being an observer and documenter of the industry, Victor shares his insights into the industry in this episode. His work as a journalist also let him travel around the world and he talks about his most favorite moments. In addition, he has valuable advice for international wool industry business to be more successful in China and how to communicate better with future and existing customers.

Victor Chesky was born in the former USSR. He immigrated to New Zealand aged 17. He started working in The Dominion newspaper in New Zealand in the 1980s and this was his introduction to media, publishing, and advertising. He established International Trade Publications (ITP) in 1986. Its first wool magazine promoting New Zealand wool was published in the Russian language when the Soviet Union was still the biggest buyer of wool. After the collapse of the Soviet Union this publication was superseded by a New Zealand / Australian English language edition that soon expanded to include profiles on exporters and processors in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa, Russia, UK and Eastern and Western Europe. In 1999 ITP further expanded its publication list to include WOOL EXPORTER CHINA (now Wool2Yarn China), a Chinese language publication reflecting the growing importance of Asia, and in particular China. This magazine plays an important role as a communication link between the global wool industry and the wool industry in China. ITP moved its office from NZ to Melbourne Australia in 2000. Its annual flagship publications are wool2yarn China and wool2yarn global. They are circulated to over 12,000 wool and textile companies in more than 60 countries each year. ITP also publishes two online industry websites - www.woolnews.net a monthly electronic newsletter and www.woolbuy.net an online platform for buyers and sellers of wool and speciality fibre. Victor Chesky travels extensively around the world visiting wool and textile companies every year.

Ben Watts is a wool grower based in Australia who is using automation technology to help him run is farm more efficiently and more effectively. Drones, RFID tags or automated scales all help Ben look after his sheep, the farm, ensure the health of his stock and improve is production and therefore his overall business. Ben explains in this episodes how the different technologies work and how they aid wool growers, sheep and consumers. As Ben saw so much success with the new types of technologies he also started his own consulting and training company, Bralca, to assist other wool growers achieve the same goals. Listen to the fascinating world of automation on farm.

Ben has been working in the merino industry over the past 25 years, in this time ben has managed sheep farms for corporate business’ up until 2005 when he and his wife Fiona purchased their second farm and began to focus on utilizing automation. In this time Ben has developed commercial applications for a number of technologies to better utilize skilled labour by reducing repetitive tasks, providing meaningful live information and identifying individual animals within large commercial flocks. Traditionally data collection has been based on manual processes to collect mob based information. Utilising individual electronic ID, Ben uses remote data collection for live monitoring of animal body weights, matching ewes to lambs and recording animal treatments. In the past two years, Ben has incorporated the use of Drones to track stock, monitor water and measure pasture growth. This has provided a new level of automated monitoring to assist in management.

Professor Stephen Russell is an expert on textile recycling. In this episode, Stephen Russell teaches us the basics of textile recycling. He shares insights into the market for reuse and recycling of textiles as well as future technological developments in this area. Stephen highlights the importance of the consumer participating in the recycling supply chain by donating used textiles as well as buying recycled products. Stephen also talks about issues of sorting used textiles, what to do with blended fabrics and dividing the textile from zippers, buttons and thread. When it comes to recycling, wool is also a special fibre which Stephen explains in detail. 

Stephen Russell is Professor of Textile Materials and Technology, as well as Group Leader for Technology in the School of Design at the University of Leeds, UK. He is a textile engineer with a background in both academic and industrial research, working mainly on the manufacture, structure and properties of new textile materials. After starting his career in wool processing research, he developed broader interests in textile technology, working on waste minimisation in textile manufacturing, recycling and reuse, design for disassembly of textile products and technical textiles. His work in textile technology has been industrially applied to various industrial, consumer and healthcare products, and in 2005 he co-founded NIRI Ltd. a University of Leeds spinout Company specialising in technical consultancy.

Isak Staats is the General Manager for Wool and Mohair at BKB in South Africa. Isak talks about the services BKB offers to wool growers in South Africa. The company handels 32 million kilograms of wool per year. He explains how different technologies help to track the wool within the BKB warehouse. Further, Isak gives insights into the wool industry in Lesotho and the special program BKB runs to employ deaf people.

Isak Staats is the General Manager Wool and Mohair at BKB in South Africa. Isak was born and raised on a dairy and irrigation farm in the Northern Cape. He started his career in the fertilizer industry in various positions for the first twenty years of his working life, all over South Africa. In 2002 he completed his MBA. In 2012, Isak joined BKB as the General Manager of the wool and mohair division. Isak is happily married and has three children.

Gaspard Tiné-Berès is the founder of Lasso Shoes, a young startup based out of France. The first product was a felted wool slipper which the company successfully launched on Kickstarter in 2013. Gaspard talks about how he came up with the idea for the wool slipper and how the put together a very local supply chain. Gaspard explains why it was important to him to source the Lasso shoe within a radius of 500 km of Paris and why the customer needs to do the final assembly. Furthermore, Gaspard shares insights about this social media strategy and introduces the brand's latest product - a felted wool bag.

Lasso is a family business based in Paris, France. Founded in 2012 by Gaspard Tiné-Berès and Amandine Richard, they launched their first product, the Lasso slippers, on Kickstarter in 2013 and sold more than 1400 pairs in just a month. As a design driven company they care about the origin, sustainability and production process of their products. They understand the responsibility of a business and the ethic is very important to them. They consequently thrive by building lasting relationships with all of their customers and suppliers.

Steve Ranford is a Senior Scientist at AgResearch. In this podcast interview, he is talking about the important environmental role wool has to play in today's world and why it is therefore important to continue research about one of the oldest fibres in the world. Steve covers topics such as biopolymers, biodegradability, isotopes and specifications.

Steve Ranford is a Senior Scientists at AgResearch in New Zealand. During his whole career, Steve has been an important contributor to wool research making huge contributions to the wool industry. Steve is currently working on wool product development, sustainable processing and new tools for process control. His research experience covers the development of visual and infra-red spectrometry, mass spectrometry and sensing technology to provide rapid information on fibre and food products. Steve has recently developed a system for tracing the origin of wool fibres that integrates with current IWTO wool sampling and testing platforms.

Claudia Weiss de Machado runs her own wool retail company by the name Don Baez Eco Chic. The brand sources only so-called grey wools from Uruguay and uses them undyed in their fashion and accessories products. All products are manufactured in Uruguay and sold online and through the Don Baez shop in Montevideo. In this interview, Claudia Weiss tells the story about how she got started working in the wool industry by learning directly from her father. She also speaks about her vision of making consumers into wool fans.

Claudia Weiss de Machado was born in 1958 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Her Czech father Fritz Weiss, was a passionate and very successful wool exporter. Claudia attended the British Schools in Montevideo and later graduated from Sussex University (UK) with a B.A. in Economics and Italian. Later she spent one year in Rome where she developed a keen interest in fashion.  Claudia lives between Montevideo and her small organic farm near Punta del Este with her husband and three children. Claudia has worked alongside her father, who has been an important mentor for her, for 20 years. Claudia's dream had always been to start a wool brand in un-dyed fine wool, which she could source locally. She named her brand after her father, whom everyone called 'Don Baez'. In 1997 Don Baez started out making woven blankets. Since then the collection has grown to include a wide range of different products including capes, jackets, ponchos etc. Her interest in fashion, as well as her desire to support animal welfare and a healthy attitude to life (LOHAS) started at an early age. Through the brand, she has created wearable designs that are simply tailored with a feminine edge but which also emphasize the sustainability of un-dyed wool. Her intention is to make Don Baez's designs have a style of their own and be timeless and hopefully very chick. Don Baez opened its first store in 2013 in Punta Carretas - the trendiest neighborhood in Montevideo. The products are also available in many Uruguayan wineries and top hotels.

In this episode, Dr. Beverley Henry talks about why the opinions about the sustainability for fibres varies so much and how we can find common grounds through the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). She shares with us the latest findings on LCA research for wool and how this is integrated into the textile supply chain. Beverley explains how individual companies can use the available research on LCA to improve their product footprint.

Dr Beverley Henry is a member of the IWTO Wool Life Cycle Assessment Technical Advisory Group, an Adjunct Associate Professor with Queensland University of Technology, and a consultant to agricultural industries. For over 30 years she has conducted research on agricultural systems focusing on profitability and sustainability especially in variable climates and markets. Beverley is particularly interested in the integration of grazing in extensive pastoral regions with effective environmental management and in communicating the value of these systems. She is a member of Australian Government technical groups on climate change and research issues and a member of several national and international Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Standards bodies, including roles with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and International Standards Organization.

In this episode, Mac Bishop, founder and CEO of Wool & Prince talks about his business. The goal of Wool & Prince is to deliver durable long lasting apparel out of wool. Mac shares his experience on launching his business with the support of a Kickstarter campaign. For the Kickstarter campaign, Mac created a well-known video where he wore one of his wool button-down shirts for 100 days. In the interview, he shares how the video got created and what to look out for when creating a successful video for your product launch. Mac also talks about key learnings and challenges when growing his business. 

Mac Bishop is the founder of Wool&Prince, an online menswear brand that makes naturally odor- and wrinkle-resistant wool button-downs. When Mac started the company, he wore a wool shirt for 100 days in row to demonstrate the functional properties of wool. After four years in upstate New York at Cornell University and another four years in NYC, Mac moved back to Portland this past summer. Read more about his experience on his blog.

Nick Armentrout is the Supply Chain Leader at US retail brand Ramblers Way. Majority of the Ramblers Way products are made out of wool, sourced directly from US based wool growers. In his interview, Nick explains the whole Ramblers Way supply chain from farm to shop. Nick talks in detail about the Ramblers Way target group and how the company plans to grow long term.

As Ramblers Way’s supply chain leader, Nick oversees the sourcing, processing, and conversion of natural fibers to the finished fabrics that create our products. He enjoys working with raw materials from nature and thinking critically about the lifecycle of Ramblers Way products. A 25-year animal agriculture and organic farming veteran, Nick has learned on his feet at Ramblers Way since 2009 and appreciates apparel designed for long-term utility and use. His role includes maintaining relationships with individual ranchers as well as manufacturers of yarns, knit and woven fabrics and the dye houses that color Rambler’s yarn and fabric. He also manages certifications of manufacturing operations, such as the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and Cradle to Cradle©. Over the course of his career, Nick has managed four small businesses for others, and two of his own, throughout start-up phase to maturity. Nick is also a Saltwater Institute veteran where he educated students on Values-Based Business Models, which for the Chappell family emphasize: 1) Quality 2) Sustainability 3) American made 4) Family Owned and 5) Transparency. Nick holds a BA in English from Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland. He participates in Maine Farm Bureau, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and Draft Animal Power Network. He has lent his skills as a volunteer to gardening, farming, and equine therapy organizations. Nick and his wife, Sarah, run Spring Creek Farm, an organic horse, sheep, hay and grain farm that also serves as the host facility for Carlisle Academy Integrative Equine Therapy & Sports for children and adults with disabilities.