Growers look for best strategy to sell country's finest fibre

Chris Chamberlain (left) and Mark Shadbolt hope the rival wool bodies can find common ground to promote New Zealand products. Photo / Supplied

Banks Peninsula wool grower Chris Chamberlain helped save a pod of whales which had stranded in his home bay of Port Levy over the holidays.

Locals managed to send about 50 of the 60-plus pod back out to sea.

Standing around the Wools of New Zealand area at the Surfaces expo in Las Vegas he jokes that farmers are a bit like whales - show them the way and they turn around and beach themselves again.

He and fellow Banks Peninsula farmer Mark Shadbolt are all too familiar with the politics of the wool industry.

They are aligned with Wool Partners International, the marketing company jointly owned by rural services company PGG Wrightson and farmer co-operative Wool Grower Holdings.

Wool Partners now owns the Wools of NZ brand, which has dozens of carpet manufacturing partners in the US and Europe.

Chamberlain's friend, Hawke's Bay farmer Hamish De Lautour, is also in Las Vegas.

De Lautour's family are investors in Elders Primary Wool, a joint venture between rival rural services firm Elders and grower group Primary Wool Co-operative.

The two groups have emerged from the chaos left behind by the demise of the Wool Board. Both are separately and differently going about the task of relaunching NZ wool as a luxury fibre.

Elders has partnered with a buying group of US retailers called IDG whose 120 members will market and sell the Just Shorn brand.

In addition Elders has formed a venture with Romney NZ to produce artisan Nepalese rugs for the US designer market.

Elders has its retailers lined up but aside from the Nepalese rug makers, has yet to secure manufacturers for its brand.

Meanwhile, Wool Partners has signed a number of its Wonz manufacturers up as inaugural Laneve partners. It now aims to get retailers on board.

At Surfaces it launched a comprehensive retailer programme, including in-store interactive touchscreens, incentives for agents, a salesperson training scheme, and a promotional campaign for the northern autumn.

Phase two of its plan will look at offering warranties and finance plans on the carpets.

Wool Partners says the response at Surfaces, and earlier at the Domotex show in Germany, was good with about 400 retailers expected to have signed up to the programme within the next 12 months.

At the heart of both strategies is the need to sign exclusive supply deals with farmers, and at the moment there are two distinct camps.

The farmer co-operatives have held discussions about a potential merger. If the sides manage to get together at all it will be at grower level, Chamberlain says.

Shadbolt who has attended the talks says they are a long way off. But the aim is to at least have the two brands owned by the same marketing structure.

"That's the idea and that's what we've got to work towards," he says.