We have had a warehouse showroom operation in Canton, Massachusetts since November 2013. Over the last year or so we were bursting at the seams so we ‘expanded’ into the rest of the room we were already using at the old Draper Felt Mill. While we really didn’t go anywhere it was a big move into a bit more space than we needed. Wool hates a vacuum so we’ve been filling it up a bit already. We had a few small lots we’d processed over the last couple of years and a few of them were looking a bit dusty when we went to visit them at the scouring plant.
This scoured wool inventory was shipped in with a mind to get a stronger feel for our carded blends. The carding mill likes to use an entire bale or lot you send when in carding orders. So we figured we’d pre-package our lots in the size we want. That way we don’t have huge lots of material that may not sell as fast as other types. We believe this will help us make a better quality more even product.
Cheap Yankees that we are, looking at the stacks of scoured wool led us to add some of these lots for sale in small quantities at great prices. We hadn’t done any market research or even had much reason to believe that our customers would be interested in this material. The scoured New Zealand wool and Texas Mohair we had been offering weren’t huge sellers, although when we added scoured Churro last year we had gotten a good response with some folks even reordering. That was about all we knew about selling scoured wool online.
Well, you like it! This past week we’ve shipped some of every one of our new and old scoured types. Even at their super low prices they’re creeping up our list of best sellers on our fancy to smart for us web site reporting system. None of the types are super spectacular first page wool, but they are regularly commercially collected and industrially processed with further processing in mind. Since we’ve been spending an increasing amount of time and money at working on growing the business this success only leads us to think what can we do next to live up to our motto, “We’ve got the wool for you.”
First we brought all our scoured wool inventory up. We have a few types we may never offer in smaller bits, but if you’re looking for something and you don’t see it you should ask. Now we’ve identified a couple of other scoured types we will be adding. We’ll also be making a couple of new carded types.
While we’re adding things we’ll also be running out of a few things. We’re fundamentally out of the #27TAS Brown Tasman Carded Sliver. We have no more of that type in the pipe line, although we still have about 60 pounds of the same material in scoured form. The other item that will be out soon is the #27DF, fine Territory Carded fleece wool. We bought some colored wool we thought would be a dead ringer for the material, but once we saw it scoured we’re thinking it will card out a bit lighter. We expect to be rolling that out soon. So look for a new 27DF that will probably be closer to the brown shade of the old 27TAS.
Otherwise we’ll be searching to add something a bit different from our woolly travels. We’re working on a few ideas for oddball items. While we brought back the Chinese Bamboo/rayon, we’re looking to add Ramie now too. So keep an eye on our site as we arrange and ship more new material.
Finally, we want to have a Spring Open House for the expanded warehouse. The only problem is that there are so many great wool shows and events in the spring when would we find a free woolless weekend we could call our own. Let us know what you think. Otherwise, if you’re nearby we’re there for some time nearly every day. If you send us an e-mail saying when you can be there we’d arrange our day to meet you. Keep in mind that UPS shows at 3pm so we need to be there sometime prior to then. Otherwise we can move up or down a few hours to fit your time.
Have a great spring!