Partners in life and in business Amanda Dorset and Ben Wilson have been producing sheepskin furnishings for the past 16 years, having spied an opportunity to do something cool with New Zealand sheepskins.
Passionate advocates for wool, the couple have also striven to grow the integrity of their woolly products with a focus on better outcomes for the planet.
“NZ was throwing six million pelts in the landfill every year. Honouring the animal that produces this amazing fibre, we found a way to make full use of the wool.
“Even better, we have now found a way to go fully woolly with collaboration, saving tonnes of synthetic from the landfill,” Dorset says.
It all began over a “wilderness cuppa”.
Dorset and Wilson had known each other since their high school days, and years later reconnected to brew a quiet sheepskin revolution.
Camping on the shores of Lake Wānaka with a bunch of old mates at a New Year’s Eve party, they got talking about the wonders of wool and the game-changing ways they could bring the luxury and durability of sheepskin to the world.
By the end of the night, it was all sorted.
Their chat was a catalyst for the development of a new lounging concept – the Wilson and Dorset ethos of bringing nature into the home to create opportunities to slow down and reconnect with the environment and each other.
It was nurture rather than nature that led to Dorset’s passion for wool’s natural features, established during the five years she spent marketing Icebreaker during the early days of the now iconic NZ outdoor clothing brand.
For Wilson, wool may well be found in his DNA.
One of his earliest memories is of playing on the sheepskin carpet his father had made for the lounge in his family’s East Taieri farmhouse.
This, perhaps, is where his deep connection with the form and functionality of wool fibre was embedded.
With three generations of entrepreneurial forebears behind him, seeing business opportunities in re-thinking primary products came naturally to him.
“They say it takes more than one person to make a good idea happen, and this is true of the Wilson and Dorset collaboration,” Dorset says.
From their destination store on Wānaka’s main street the couple shipped their signature furniture pieces all over the globe, fulfilling their dream of redefining the shared spaces in which people live, work and play.
But Dorset had one bugging frustration.
She was “sick to death” of carefully crafting natural, 100% woollen products for a market of conscientious consumers, then having no option but to stuff them with synthetics.
“But we were not in the business of fill and you need to focus on what you know,” she says.
Now the pair have launched a series of home decor pieces that are “fully woolly” outside and in.
Collaborating with a similarly future-focused wool brand, Wisewool, the couple’s sheepskin cushions and stackable stone sets – which act as bolsters or floor furniture for leaning against, working on or relaxing into – are filled with Wisewool’s revolutionary engineered wool.
It is a huge sigh of relief for Dorset, who says Wilson & Dorset have been focused on better outcomes for the planet for some time, but just couldn’t find a suitable supplier of natural filling.
When renowned chef and restaurateur Al Brown introduced Dorset to Harry Urquhart-Hay, one of Wisewool’s founders, the pair immediately saw the potential to work together.
“As the world learns more about the peril the planet is in, there’s rising demand for 100% renewable, sustainable and biodegradable fibres that offer style, form and functionality,” Dorset says.
“We could no longer, in good conscience, contribute to the climate emergency by filling our natural woollen products with petrochemical-based synthetics.
“As the saying goes, what’s inside matters.
“Wisewool’s wool fill provided us a 100% natural offering and was the solution to us maintaining environmental integrity.”
When the filling arrived Dorset “couldn’t wait to rip that bloody synthetic fill out of cushions sitting in my warehouse”.
By using Wisewool wool fill inside its cushions and stone sets, more than 600kg of imported polyester fill will be saved each year from eventually ending up in landfill.
“Soon, our shaggy sheepskin beanbags will also be filled with wool, saving a further 350,000 litres of nasty synthetic beans from being manufactured and used.
“That’s 500t of plastic over 10 years that is not going into landfill. That’s something to be totally motivated by.”
Urquhart-Hay says using wool fill is good news for NZ, the planet and for the strong wool sector locally.
“At Wisewool, one of our key values is to improve strong wool prices for our farmers.
“We do this by taking their incredible fibre, which already has a reputation for being the best wool in the world, and developing it into a value-add, branded product.
“At our plant near Matamata, we engineer NZ strong wool into woollen buds and woollen cloud,” Urquhart-Hay says.
Working with Callaghan Innovation and the University of Otago’s textile department, Wisewool has learnt to harness the compressional resilience of wool.
“Therefore, we can replace synthetic filling with our premium equivalent where loft is required, from puffer jackets to pillows to sofas,” Urquhart-Hay says.
Being fully woolly means the products have so much more integrity to them.
“This is a collection I can say we’re truly proud of through and through,” Dorset says.
“Each product is of the land, harnessing wool’s natural attributes and will return to the land and fully break down at the end of its long life.”
She believes the “pendulum is finally turning”.
Consumer surveys show people are feeling disconnected from nature and have nagging doubts that they are not leading the life they should be.
Connecting to nature is driving buying decisions at a time when outside-the-box thinking about wool meets the realisation that plastics are ruining the planet.
“This is good for farmers, this driving value up the supply chain, this is good for NZ, good for the planet – no one is losing here,” Dorset says.
