By BECKY TALLEY
Sheep Industry News Associate Editor

(February 1, 2010)  Consumers are increasingly demanding to know where their goods have come from. While this is most noticeable in the food sector, it is gaining increasing popularity outside of that realm. People want to know where their clothes are coming from, and if they are made from a natural-fiber, the conditions in which that fiber was raised.

With this in mind, Mountain Meadows Wool Mill LP which performs wool processing and spinning, is embarking on yet another leg of its already interesting journey, and offering a groundbreaking service to give consumers the ability to trace a purchase back to the ranch it started on.

This year, the mill will begin to offer product traceability through a database called the ScoringAg traceback system. A customer can buy a skein of yarn which is labeled with a traceback code that when entered into the database will provide information on the ranch and the wool.

“Consumers are very interested in the breeds and fiber characteristics. They want to know where it came from and that the animals are well cared for. They are wanting that assurance,” says Valerie Spanos, Mountain Meadow Wool Mill co-owner.

Spanos and fellow co-owner, Karen Hostetler, felt offering traceability was an easy step to make because the wool growers they work with already practice sustainability and good animal welfare just by raising sheep the way they have been raised for decades.

“Our mission always was to create a company that sustains ranching. The only way we could do that was to give ranchers credit for their good practices and create a market for that,” says Hostetler. “It seems like a really good time to initiate the traceability. Consumers do want to know, so we are going to have that ability.”

Adding the traceability concept to the mill’s business plan is just the latest in what has been a year of growth for the company.

They first received grants to research the facility in 2004, and after several more years of grants, training and location of equipment, they began spinning yarn and are now seeing an increase in sales.

“A year ago, we were actively looking for yarn shops. This time last year we had only two yarn shops that were buying from us. Now we have shops all across the country buying and have three sales reps,” Hostetler says, adding that their yarns are picking up international clients as well.

“We are starting to get a name. We are starting to get branded, which is what we wanted this year,” Spanos relates.

Currently, the mill offers batts and roving for hand spinning, skeins of yarn and a limited amount of knitted products that are made from the mill’s yarn and knitted in New York. They also have a relationship with a small business that buys Mountain Meadow’s yarn and then makes private-label outdoor and hunting gloves and mittens.

Much of this product comes from 24-micron or finer wool that is produced by the four or five growers that the mill has forged a relationship with. These growers are located in the Wyoming area, many are members of the Mountain States Cooperative, and meet the standards that the mill requires in terms of sustainability and handling practices.

According to Spanos, the growers have been an integral part of the success of the mill, as it is designed for the producers to provide wool up front and receive payment when the final product is sold. Once it is sold, the growers get 10 percent of the sale of the finished product, and are more than compensated the auction price of the wool.

“We have had growers that are willing to take a risk with us. The growers own their wool all the way to the consumer, but they are really getting a good price at the end,” says Hostetler.

The mill already keeps track of whose wool  goes into what product, and with the addition of the electronic database, expects to see an increase in customers looking for this option.

“Customers have requested yarn that came from a specific ranch already,” Spanos says.

With continued growth, Spanos and Hostetler are hoping to expand product lines at the mill, including those that might be made from the coarser and black-face wools.
They also hope to continue to research and implement more ways to walk the sustainability walk while they are talking the talk, focusing now on effluent and waste water treatment and recycling through a recent grant.

“We don’t want to be a wasteful company. Wyoming water is much too valuable to waste,” says Hostetler, adding they are also hoping to extract wool grease from waste and research is ongoing on the ability to capture methane, which would be used to power some of the mill’s equipment.

For Hostetler and Spanos, taking their vision of a sustainable, innovative business that supports local wool growers to where it is now has been more than they had hoped for … and a little unexpected.

“The future looks good. It has been real positive. We could never have envisioned what this was going to look like; it kind of had a life of its own. We filled a need and we are happy about it,” Hostetler says.