Sheer Brilliance: a founder story.
Words by Helen Vause. Photos: Merrie Hewetson, Enneke Vaags, Lisa Portas. This is an excerpt from an interview that originally appeared in the March 23rd, 2023 edition of the Waiheke Weekender.
Sophie Poelman is designing healthier interiors using wool in a bid to help turn around the declining fortunes of some New Zealand wool farmers. The Waiheke textile designer saw an opportunity to make functional, healthy, and attractive products from the coarser wool produced by many sheep farmers that has been providing dwindling returns while demand for the country's fine merino wool soars. Returning home from a successful career with international brands, Sophie wanted to add value to one of New Zealand's signature homegrown products with design, and has joined the battle to bring strong or coarse wool back into hotter demand. To do that, she's developed an interiors product she's keeping under wraps while she works to refine the design and bring an innovative product to life. She's recently received a substantial grant from the Ministry of Primary Industries to back her enterprise. Sophie joins a small flock fighting to pull innovation and industry collaboration together to reverse low demand and prices for strong wool. With farmers struggling to cover the costs of shearing in the face of low wool prices per kilo, the campaign for wool has significant potential repercussions for rural New Zealand communities.
Why coarse wool?
While New Zealand's merino story is admired the world over, the country's strong wool is sold at auction overseas as a bulk commodity. There's little understanding at this end of how these global buyers use this remarkable natural material, say industry sources. In New Zealand, coarse wool is often used in carpets and insulation, although there's increasing interest among designers and innovators. Those who champion wool say that while the coarse clip is now almost worthless to farmers, its potential environmental benefits are well understood, and the industry needs to explore these benefits to add value. As a textile designer Sophie was excited by the potential of working with the abundant coarse wool clip, with its added benefit of supporting mindful fashion and local production, two causes Sophie is committed to. Wool, she says, has many compelling properties :
"It's a perfect functional and aesthetic material for interior enviromnents where wellbeing is of utmost importance. For spaces promoting mental and physical health, the acoustics, air quality, comfort and a connection to nature are key. It's durable, it's fireproof and it's enviromnentally friendly. It is incredible for absorbing sound and therefore it creates privacy in open spaces. It's environmental properties make it a fabric that fits perfectly within the circular product lifecycle."
Early Strong wool experiments : Clockwise from top left: Knitted structures, Natural plant dyeing, and machine felting.
Upbringing
Sophie has circled the world to come back to where she started and back to where her creative seeds were first sown. She returned home from Europe to Waiheke where she grew up with a mother who had plenty of courage when it came to having a go at bold new ventures - a spirit she instilled in her daughter. Arti Van Eerden came from the Netherlands as a single mother with two-year-old Sophie. "I had a wonderful childhood in this beautiful place with great people around us. I was lucky to grow up here with a mother who encouraged and supported me all the way." But with her Dutch heritage, talent and strong curiosity, it was no surprise that young Sophie took off to see the world, leaving behind her idyllic island childhood just as soon as she was able. She'd completed a degree in textile design by 2006; and discovered a passion and talent for snowboarding that enabled a carefree ski-bum existence in California ski resorts. Off the slopes, she was working in resort town retail stores and gathering expertise in the latest in mountain sports-gear. Her design education did not go to waste; she was asked to design window displays for hot brands in a destination store. "For a time I was just obsessed with snowboarding, and for a couple of years I was able to make it all work for me in the mountains."
Snow outerwear designs for O’Neill Europe
Back to her roots in Europe
When the time came to move to Europe and think about finding work in design, Sophie headed to Amsterdam, a country with welcoming relatives. She laughs, remembering arriving there flat broke. There was the job in a bagel shop, the job in a pizzeria, the internship at an agency - and the matter of learning the language. She recalls plenty of knockbacks, some of them dispiriting. When her ticket to return home was close to expiry she was almost ready to give up on her dream of life and work in the European design industry. But positive words from her supportive mother back home on the island saw Sophie use her return ticket to visit mum and then fly straight back to Amsterdam. She was going to have another shot at breaking into a job in design, not head home full of regret. Freelance and contract work came her way, and her persistence finally brought a big break - one which would fast-track her design career. A heartfelt letter from the mad-keen snowboarding Kiwi textile designer struck the right note with sportswear giant O'Neill and Sophie was suddenly heading places. Still in the Netherlands, she became a design trainee in snow outerwear with O'Neill, working on developing their hot new ranges for boys, girls and small children.
"I couldn't believe my luck. I had found the most beautiful landing pad with the coolest people. They were amazing to work for with a very good culture and I learned so much. For five years I was nurtured in my role and I almost had (complete) creative freedom, doing what I wanted."
Working for O'Neill saw her travelling to trade fairs and meetings all over Europe and Asia, and ultimately leading the design and development of snow gear for children. The company was on the cusp of mega growth, says Sophie, and this range and age group was doing well. But outside the office, chance encounters brought other changes. In Amsterdam, the Wellington band Fat Freddy's Drop were playing one night and at that concert she met another New Zealander, the industrial designer Alain Brideson, who became her life partner and more recently, her business collaborator.
Sophie and Alain on the farm and at their co-working space on Waiheke.
Back to Waiheke via Italy
By the time she was ready to move on from O'Neill, she had a thorough grasp of the 'performance outerwear' business. She was able to exploit trends, dream up glorious colour palettes, hand-sketch designs and take them through to final production. Sophie moved on to design mountaineering apparel for the European Salewa Group, working closely with developers and athletes. With the job came a shift in lifestyle. In summer there was mountaineering, alpine climbing, hiking and trekking in the Dolomites. In winter there was more hiking, skiing and snowshoeing for the former snowboard fanatic. Far from the sunshine and beaches of home, Sophie was living a different dream and advancing her career in textile design with exciting brands. At a trade fair and after-work barbecue in Balzano, Italy, Sophie met the team from the New Zealand-grown brand Macpac and they persuaded her to work for them. Coming home was a big transition for Sophie and Alain. They bought their home in Surfdale in 2016, and set up desks at the co-working space in the old Surfdale post office. Sophie dabbled in new product ideas but set up her design consultancy to go it alone, rather than work in-house for a large brand again. On Waiheke the couple had their children Inez, five, and Julian, two. With her little 'lockdown baby' and more time away from the office, Sophie had the time and space away from her client work to think about her next project and the possibilities with this country's strong wool clip - a resource desperately in need of a brighter future.
“A craft approach can inform an industrial process. I call what I have been doing with wool my self-directed masters project. I am lucky to be able to tap into the wealth of creative talent here (on Waiheke). ”
Her experimentation started with 30kgs of coarse wool from a Waiheke farm. Working closely with that fibre encouraged her to explore wool as a functional fabric. She says early on she realised this was the fibre she had been waiting her entire career for. She wanted to focus her skills on pushing the boundaries of what could be done with this type of wool and take it to a commercial proposition. Her research led to many people who are already working with wool, from fabric textile labs and wool felting machines to a local group of skilled weavers who taught her about using natural materials to dye wool. Sophie is working with graphic designers and business mentors on the island and with partner Alain, an internationally known industrial designer. "I couldn't do this on my own," she says.
Experimenting with the state of the art digital weaving, knitting, and felting machines at the Auckland University of Technology’s textile department.
Farm sourced
Nowadays she is sourcing wool directly from Palliser Ridge station in the South Wairarapa and is proud of her association with an innovative farm which has won environmental awards and featured on the television favourite, Country Calendar. The programme showcased the farm's regenerative approach to their property. The 1500ha station is stocked with Romney sheep suited to the rugged landscape. They shear 6,000 ewes twice a year and 9,000 lambs once a year, resulting in a harvest of about 40,000kgs of wool annually. Their wool is coarse or strong wool and is at the high end of the fibre scale at 29 microns. A micron is a measure of the diameter of wool fibre and finer wool starts to come in at under 23 microns. The lower the micron number, the finer and softer the wool is.
Sophie at the Palliser Ridge shearing with grower Kurt Portas
At Palliser Ridge they're working on their own initiatives to make products from their wool and to sell wool in relationships that are traceable from customer to manufacturer, to ensure they are proud of the end products produced from the hacks of their flock. And Sophie is proud to point out that she's paying around $8 per kilo to purchase clean wool from this station, more than triple the wool price on the conventional wool commodity market. "We feel good about paying growers fairly. We believe in supporting their efforts to regenerate the soil and care for the welfare of their sheep." In between the disastrous major weather events in February, Sophie was able to make it to the shearing at Palliser Ridge, meet the people behind the operation, from shearers to managers, and experience a full on day in the woolshed.
“I knew I had to make it down for the shearing. For me it is a fundamental part of the design process to meet everyone that works along the value chain, especially at farm level. I want to take away the anonymity that accompanies so many wool brokering transactions and make it personal again between farmer and designer.”
At this stage of development, the exact nature of her interiors product is a closely guarded secret but qualifying for a substantial $100,000 grant from the Ministry for Primary Industries has given a significant boost to what she expects to be a two-year journey before she brings her product to the market. The process will go like this: the wool is growing year-round in the Wairarapa. Sheep are shorn in February, and again in August. On Waiheke, the slow design and 'prototyping' takes place. The wool clip is sent to Napier for scouring where greasy lanolin is washed off. Then the wool goes to Wellington for carding and spinning into slivers of yarn. It will be processed here and in Australia into textiles and products, using lowwaste digital knitting technology. Then, says Sophie, the products will be assembled into their final form on Waiheke and sent to customers worldwide. •
