New Product Development

Over the past 12 months the Sales & Marketing team have been working on numerous new products with downstream brands. Why do we do this? It’s simple the more British wool rich products on the market the more demand for British wool which in turn means better returns to our members.

On the sleep side new traceable bedding ranges have been launched with Woolroom, Devon Duvets and Luna Textiles.  Floks have also launched a new bedding range. Harrison Spinks a leading player in the bedding arena launched a new range of 100% traceable British wool mattresses, a good proportion of this wool is Welsh Mountain and this has certainly helped in the price recovery on that particular grade over recent months.

Despite the downturn in the contract sector carpets remain a crucial end market for British wool. In September the Headlam Group introduced a new 100% British wool yarn which they plan to use across a number of ranges across their extensive brand portfolio over the next few years (Wool Britannia), the first such range was Manx Tomkinson’s Seasonal Views Collection, work is underway on new developments for 2022. Brintons one of our longest serving licensee partners launched a stunning new range of carpets in partnership with the lifestyle magazine Country Life.

Knitwear has long been an important market for British wool and during the last 12 months numerous brands have launched new ranges.  The leading premium menswear brand Fred Perry launched a range of British wool jumpers, this is great brand association for British Wool as we try and increase awareness of the brand in the consumer setting.  New licensees such as Yan Tan, House of Sustainability and Mars Knitwear all launched new knitwear ranges for their AW21 collections.  Existing licensees Peregrine and Charl Knitwear also added new options to their British wool collections, all of which are available on the British Wool shop.

Other new products launched included new yarn ranges by West Yorkshire Spinners and McIntosh and a new tartan cloth by Lochcarron of Scotland.  In terms of innovation a new range of horse saddles was launched by Nuumed and a range of new packaging was introduced by Naturwoolly Chilled.  We also continue to work with Huddersfield University on a range of British wool facemasks, initial results are very encouraging and hope to commercialise the product during 2022.

Graham Clark Director of Marketing commented “The product development over the past 12 months has been really encouraging and we have seen more new products launched than ever before, an increasing number of brands are wanting to use British wool in their products and it is crucial that we capitalise on this. This is a continuous process and we have many new products in the pipeline for 2022.”