This year, we’re partnering with the experts behind our Good Merino Wool: The New Zealand Merino Company. As the world’s leading responsible and regenerative wool supplier, they’ve been setting the highest wool standards for fiber quality, animal welfare, as well as environmental and social responsibility since 2006. This Black Friday Fund partnership is one that hits particularly close to home, since they developed the wool in our best-selling Good Merino Wool sweaters. 

Wool That Keeps On Giving—To You and the Environment 

Good on you, better for the planet, and the best wool we’ve ever had, our Good Merino Wool is a blend of 92% ZQRX™ wool and 8% ZQ™ wool—both of which are certified to the ZQ standard and the Responsible Wool Standard, ensuring growers follow the Five Freedoms of animal welfare and develop in-depth environmental management plans. What’s more, ZQRX™ wool is part of a particularly exclusive subset of responsible wool where over 500 wool growers are committed to continuous improvement beyond sustainability. Grown using regenerative farming principles on over 4 million acres of land, ZQRX™ wool cuts down on carbon emissions while supporting soil regeneration and building a positive future for Merino farming.

From Farm to Sweater 

To create our sumptuously soft Good Merino Wool, ZQRX™ wool growers get down to earth every day—restoring waterways, protecting native species, offsetting carbon, and enhancing local communities to provide world-class pastures for the sheep to graze on in a manner that is gentle for them and the planet. 

Once a year, in early springtime, the wool is collected by shearing the sheep. The New Zealand Merino Company describes it as “a number four haircut, but for sheep!” Collecting wool during the spring ensures that the sheep still have their coats during the colder winter months. The shearers are highly skilled and pride themselves on the utmost care and attention when handling the sheep—prioritizing their comfort while relieving them from having to endure hot summer days with heavy fleece. 

After the wool is collected, each piece is hand selected and inspected by an expert classer of wool—checking the fiber quality and assessing it to make sure it meets the New Zealand Merino Company’s world-leading ethical wool standards for quality as well as animal, environmental, and social responsibility. 

We then take the ZQRX™ wool and ZQ™wool, and turn it into our beautiful Good Merino Wool sweaters, which we personally think are the softest merino wool sweaters out there—sans the itchiness often associated with wool. It’s a win for your wardrobe, the planet, and the sheep.

If We’re Counting Sheep

On the subject of wins for sheep, every $100 spent will kickstart regenerative grazing for 66 sheep in New Zealand. Our goal? $50,000, which equates to greener pastures for 33,000 sheep.

As part of this partnership with the New Zealand Merino Company, we're sponsoring eight farms in an effort to protect and restore native ecosystems and soil health in New Zealand—with a focus on the sheep that graze on these farms and produce the wool for our beautiful Good Merino Wool sweaters.

Our donation will support holistic land health on these eight farms through 

• A comprehensive land health assessment of the baseline state of the eight farms. These baseline measurements set a starting point for the land health of farms and allow us to track improvement over time. 

• Grower onboarding and capability building via on-farm workshops—aimed at maximizing engagement in the work prior to assessment. (Capability building is key to ensure growers comprehend the measurements to build a farm-specific strategy to drive improvement.)

• Network creation with professionals and other growers to build land health knowledge and introduce holistic management techniques, including livestock integration, for the acceleration of positive, regenerative land health outcomes.  

Together, let's give a sheep.