Kate Macdonald is excited about the launch of her new wool jersey business Davaar & Co. Photo part of montage by Tina McGregor, Megan Graham, Supplied.
A young Southland woman is combining her family's more than century-long wool-growing experience with her own qualifications and passion for the farming sector to launch a business. She talks to Otago Daily Times business and rural editor Sally Rae.
All things being equal, Kate Macdonald should have been living it up in London.
But the intervention of a global pandemic eventually turned the proverbial curse into a blessing for the young Southland woman.
On Saturday, Macdonald (25) is launching Davaar & Co, taking wool from her long-established family property Davaar Station, near Te Anau, and producing homespun-style woollen jerseys, in a farm-to-fashion process with each step being done in New Zealand.
Davaar Station is an 1100ha sheep and beef property which has been farmed by the Macdonald family since 1915.
It runs from the Mararoa River to the bushline of the Takitimu mountain range and comprises a mix of steep hill country and flat pastoral land.
Macdonald has always been "super passionate" about farming, particularly the wool industry.
After leaving school, she completed an agribusiness and food marketing degree at Lincoln University.
It was the second year of the degree and she learned a lot; it was very New Zealand-product focused in terms of marketing and getting a New Zealand product to market globally, she said.
After finishing university in 2017, she spent nine months working at Minaret Station Alpine Lodge where she met some "incredible" people and also picked up plenty of tips about business.
From there, she joined the marketing team of a New Zealand honey company, based in Mt Maunganui, for two years.
The honey was sold online by Amazon to the United States and Europe and she was now putting some of the skills and information she learned there into her own business, she said.
Macdonald returned home to the farm in January 2020 with the intention of heading overseas in June that year.
She worked on the farm until Covid-19 scuppered her plans and then decided to use her time at home wisely.
She and her father James had always talked about doing something with wool but he was always so busy and she was not really around, so the time seemed right.
Disheartened with the prices being received for the crossbred wool clip, they talked about what they could do with their own clip to add value.
For Macdonald, she did not have to explore anything other than the beloved homespun jerseys that she and her siblings, Anna and Ben, grew up wearing.
Their grandmother was an "amazing" knitter and they all wore "beautiful jerseys", yet such styles were not really available on the market.
So being at home and armed with her marketing degree and with the skills to get a business off the ground, she decided to go ahead with a business venture.
Her father gave her the contact of Grant Edwards, from PGG Wrightson Wool, who proved to be a valuable first step and provided her with names of other people to talk to, while she also researched other contacts.
During this time, she was still working full-time on the farm and, a lot of that time, she was out on her own on the property.
That gave her time to think about how she wanted the business to work and what her business model looked like.
Initially, she thought she could get her jerseys manufactured overseas to keep the costs down. But she remembers vividly being on the farm, and a change of heart coming over her.
"It was so not who I am or what I wanted the business to be," she said, adding that she wanted it to be fully sustainable and New Zealand made.
With Covid-19, it also became even more apparent that people wanted to support New Zealand businesses and buy local and New Zealand made.
"The New Zealand-made tagline had never been more important, really," she said.
Macdonald recalled her excitement when the first samples of jerseys arrived at the end of 2020.
"It was like the best day ever. To think that wool came off a sheep from our farm and we had it back in a jersey form, it was so cool," she said.
Since then, it had been about critiquing and finalising which resulted in four different styles in four different colourways.
"I've kept it quite simple at the beginning so it's easy for me to manage," she said.
Once launched, it would be interesting to see what customers, and the market, liked.
Initially, it was a "bit of a trial" and she was all about criticism and constructive feedback.
Asked what she expected her target market to be, Macdonald said she expected a large proportion to be rural folk, but she also wanted to target urban dwellers and sell them not only jerseys but the story behind them.
Having Davaar Station in the family for more than 100 years was "pretty incredible" and she was relishing the opportunity to tell the story of the wool in her jerseys.
Macdonald's parents, James and Fiona, were the fourth generation to farm the property.
James' great-great uncle Donald Macdonald emigrated to New Zealand from Scotland at 19, with his brother John, in 1877.
In 1915, Donald bought The Plains Station, a 3447ha property near Te Anau, and the intention was his son, also Donald would take it over.
Tragically, young Donald was killed in action at the Battle of Messines in Belgium in 1917.
That same year, Donald senior's nephew Angus - grandfather of James - returned from the Western Front, having been wounded on a French battlefield.
Donald offered him the opportunity to run the station and Angus moved on to the property in 1918.
Tragedy struck the family soon after when Donald's eldest son Alick died during the influenza epidemic.
In 1923, Angus married Evelyn (Evie) Cunningham and the couple had three sons, Hamish, John and James' father Angus (known as David).
In 1939, a huge snowstorm swept the Te Anau region lasting weeks on end and the station lost 2000 sheep and all the cattle on the hill country.
In 1961, David married Sally Robertson and they had three sons - Dougal, James and William. Tragedy occurred again in 1969 when 6-year-old Dougal was accidentally killed while riding a horse.
In 1970, The Plains Station was split into three properties to enable each brother to farm on their own account.
David and Sally took over the run end of the station, naming it Davaar Station after a little island just off Campbeltown in Scotland where the family came from. In 1993, James and Fiona took it over.
Macdonald recalled how wool was such a valuable product "back in the day" but the evolution of plastics had "completely ruined" the wool industry.
Her "amazing" 85-year-old grandfather David was very proud to see his family doing something with wool.
The launch was originally planned in November but Covid-19 hindered that and it was now being held on Saturday at the station homestead, attended by family, friends and colleagues who had "helped make it all happen".
One of the wool colours was natural and the others used environmentally-friendly dyes.
Down the track, Macdonald would love to be able to use "foraged bits" from the farm to make dyes, which would fit in well with her model.
Sales would be done online and she was running the business from the farm cottage she lived in with her sister Anna, a "foodie" who had her own catering business.
While she was "gutted" at the time about her OE plans being cancelled, Macdonald said she was now "pretty stoked to be home".
"There was a time ... I was really gutted about it. As it's turned out, I wouldn't have gone down this pathway. It's definitely meant to be," she said.
Macdonald felt very fortunate to both be living rurally in such a beautiful environment and to have such "awesome" parents both to work for and to have supporting her in her business.
She had lots of ideas for her business, saying it was going to involve "trial and error" and working it out.
The wool was sent from the Davaar woolshed to the WoolWorks scour in Washdyke, then to Woolyarns in Wellington, before being sent south to Otago Knitwear in Dunedin, and then the finished product back to Davaar.
"It's great. I'm just so proud it's all done in New Zealand."
She was keen to add value not only to her own family's clip but also to other that of other farmers.
She wanted to get her products "out there", get people wearing them and "get the talk happening" about the benefits of wool.
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