I am a passionate stud sheep breeder who obviously wants there to be a
strong future for sheep farming in New Zealand, but what is the future, I don’t
know?
I do know that I am sick to death of listening to commentaries on the
topic which are just generalised generic crap, with no detail as to how we
achieve these grandiose statements they make.
A perfect example of this recently was Damien O’Connor, the agricultural
spokesperson for Labour, waffling in an interview with Jamie McKay on the
Country along the lines: wool is a great sustainable product with health benefits,
fire resistant blah blah, they need to get out there and market the product,
too long nothing has been done by the government, by processors, by blah blah. I don’t recall exactly what he said but it
was along these lines: he uttered similar rhetoric regarding the meat industry.
I know from my own experience and involvement over the years that a lot
of people and entities have endeavoured to get the message out about wool, they
have tried to market a clean green traceable story behind it, they have
emphasised the positive attributes of wool, but has any traction been made,
given the price of wool currently you would probably say no. Should more be done? Sure, but what do we
do?
I did a quick search on the internet:
wool versus synthetic carpet, some
key differences: Price, synthetic
carpets generally much cheaper: synthetic carpets generally much more fade
resistance (solution dyed nylon carpets carry warranties for this) an issue if
have large windows or doors where carpet is exposed to sun; wool better insulator,
warmer in winter and cooler in summer and good for those with asthma; wool
generally more resilient, but will wear more in heavy traffic areas compared to
some synthetic carpets. Wool is a
natural sustainable renewable product. There
is a lot more on the internet for consumers to digest before determining what
carpet to buy.
However like most things today I would imagine the biggest obstacle for
wool carpets is Price! Clearly anything
made of wool is a niche product that needs to be aimed at the wealthy consumer,
a generic statement made by me! However I
really don’t know how we gain more traction in this market.
Citing Icebreaker as an example is pretty
tiresome, given this is a fine wool clothing product produced by a private
company that focuses on a very small niche market, in theory it should be easy
to replicate, but I suspect the bigger the niche market you are trying to
target the harder it is! Moreover clothing is a product that appeals to
people’s vanity and in terms of the price to carpet a home, is a very small sum
to pay and such I would presume it’s much easier to market an expensive
sweatshirt to a person than a wool carpet.
Others waffle on about how we need to bring back a Wool board and a Meat
board: to do what? If they were so fantastic the first time
around why is the sheep industry in the present predicament it is today. If these boards are the answer, could the
advocates please state why they will make a difference, give specifics of how
and what they will and can do, including the amount of funding that may be
required to achieve what they are suggesting, not simply we need to bring back
the Wool Board to market generically around the world.
I think many people forget that while we
as New Zealanders consider ourselves big players in the market, we are not, we
are just a drop in the ocean and as such to create the sort of brand
recognition that the “Wool board would do” is so far beyond the resources we
have its ludicrous.
I applaud those who publicly air their opinion, as arguably without it,
nothing would ever change or improve.
However those who simply regurgitate what has been said for the last 20
years, without providing specifics or detail as to how we achieve these stock
standard generic statements, I, for one, would rather not have to read or
listen to any more of their dribble!!!
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