About
The wool industry is full of people with experience, questions and ideas, but there are few places where they actually meet. Young Wool NZ is that place.
How it works
Discussions
Members raise the problems they see at work and talk them through with people who have dealt with the same thing. You can bring an idea or simply listen first.
Projects
When an idea has enough support, a small group of members tests it, for example a shared training resource for young shearers.
What we talk about
These are the first topics. Members decide what comes next.
Shearer training and animal welfare
How to train new shearers well, and how to keep standards up in a busy season.
Tracing wool to the farm
What it would take to follow wool from the farm to a finished product.
Prices for strong wool
New uses and markets for the coarser wool most New Zealand farms produce.
Digital tools in the shed
Rosters, tallies and pay are still often on paper. What works instead.
Who takes part
Membership is free and open to everyone working with wool in New Zealand. Young Wool NZ is not-for-profit and has no advertising.
- Farmers
- Shearers and contractors
- Wool handlers and classers
- Wool buyers and brokers
- Scourers, spinners and mills
- Designers and brands
- Researchers and students
- Trainers and industry bodies
- Anyone curious about wool
Who’s behind it
Young Wool NZ grew out of ShearOps. While building digital tools for shearing teams, Anton met many people with good ideas for modernising the industry, but they had nowhere to work on them together, and problems take much longer to solve when everyone works on them alone.
Anton Musalov
Founder of Young Wool NZ and ShearOps
Anton is a software engineer. A close friend of his is a shearer who also runs his own shearing gangs, and Anton started ShearOps to solve the everyday problems he saw in his friend’s business.
Voices from the industry
[Example quotes, replace with real ones before launch]
“Most of what I know about shearing I learned by watching. I want good training for new shearers that doesn’t depend on which gang you end up in.”
“Our strong wool barely covers the cost of shearing. I want to hear what has actually worked for other farmers.”
“I design with New Zealand wool, but I rarely know which farm it comes from. I’d like to meet the people at the other end of the chain.”
Events
[Example event, replace before launch]
First Young Wool NZ meet-up
Online · Thursday 27 November, 7 pm NZDT
Meet other young people in wool, hear what members want to talk about and help choose the first topics.