Start to Finish

21 June 2026 --- Ralph

How long does it take to make a WeatherWool garment, from start to finish? A year to a year-and-a-half is best-case. For Batch Innes-1 (Batch 11), it will be about 3.5 years in total. But that's just the WeatherWool part. The Ranchers start their work years before we do!

This page presents the main steps and the timeline. A separate page, How WeatherWool is Made, details each of these steps and many others, and introduces the many companies and professionals that help in the process.

In Spring of each year our Ranchers examine the performance records of each ewe and determine which ram will be a suitable sire for her next lambs. This process begins in June. Click for some photos and discussion of these events on PM Ranch in Minnesota in 2018.
Nearly a year later, in late April or May (on PM Ranch), lambs are born. [Let's say 1 year has passed.]
When the lambs are almost one year old, they are shorn for the first time. Normally, the wool grown in a sheep's first year is finer (thinner) than the wool grown later in life, and so ewes that have been bred for us often do not produce fiber we can use at their first shearing. But we do sometimes buy lamb's wool. [Two years have passed.]
When the grown lamb is a 2-year old ewe, it is shorn again, and this will usually be the first time it will produce fiber that we can use. [Three years have passed.]
A few things have to happen before we actually can take possession of the wool. The fleece must be:

baled
transported (mostly) to the Rancher's cooperative warehouse in Gillette, Wyoming
greasy (raw) wool is then sampled for testing ...
samples sent to the lab. The testing is done at the New Zealand Wool Testing Authority because the USA's only lab that did all the tests we need closed in 2019. The University of Texas did some testing for us as of 2023, but the "length and strength" testing we require is not available in the USA. Most American buyers don't need L&S data
Test results returned to the ranchers, brokers (perhaps) and to us. We have a login at NZWTA, so we can see online all the results for the batches we are considering for purchase
Most of our fiber is purchased directly from our rancher by private treaty, but sometimes we buy at sealed-bid auction

These several items regarding the purchase of the raw fiber are accomplished rather quickly, about six weeks, but let's say one month. [Three years and 1 month have passed.]

Although three years have elapsed since our Ranchers began planning, we'll start our own clock from this point, when we first start spending money

6. WeatherWool pays for the wool. This is when WeatherWool begins to incur costs, and we are responsible for all the costs hereafter. We also pick up the costs for testing of the fiber we buy

7. Now the wool must be trucked to Chargeurs in South Carolina, where it is scoured (cleaned) and combed into TOP. [One month to arrange and complete trucking.]

8. Lately (2025, 2026), Chargeurs will make us wait a year before they process our wool. Depending on exactly what we are making, the top might be prepared for further processing elsewhere, and then shipped to other companies for dyeing or worsted spinning. This will take about 13 months, mostly just waiting for Chargeurs to do a week or two of actual processing. [13 months have passed]

7. American Woolen and WeatherWool (and sometimes Rob Stuart, our Advisor and original Fabric Engineer), decide what Fabrics will be made, and discuss how the fiber needs to be prepared, then American Woolen apportions the fiber as needed. This will take a month or so. [14 months.]

8. American Woolen sends our fiber to the dye house, Tintoria Piana, in Georgia. There are other dye houses we use, and processing times will vary, but it seems never quick. Three months minimum, maybe six months. [17 months if dyeing takes only three months.]

9. Kentwool or Meridian spins our worsted yarn, and American Woolen prepares, blends and spins our woolen yarns. This will take four to six months. [21 months if this step takes 4 months.]

10. The yarn is then woven into loom-state (greige) Fabric at American Woolen or at Material Technology and Logistics depending upon what we make. Finishing of the greige is done at American Woolen. Some of the Fabric will be complete fairly quickly ... the first bolts in maybe two months once weaving begins. But completion can easily take a year or more, particularly for the larger Batches we handle now. But we'll get some Fabric to work with in as little as two months. Let's call this 2-12 months, because we won't have to wait for it all at once. [23-35 months.]

11. The finished Fabric is sent mostly to Factory8 for tailoring. At least two months and maybe four to turn around a run of complete garments. Let's say three months. [26 to 38 months have now elapsed.]

13. ALSO ... Tailors or Hat Makers may be booked months in advance, and may require that all our materials are in their possession BEFORE they actually book production time. This requirement can add more months to our production cycle. Another impediment is that the tailors want to do the largest runs we can send them. The bigger the production run, the more efficiency and the higher the quality of the work. And so naturally, the tailors want to do all the Fabrics at once ... Black, Brown, Drab, Lynx, Natural. The colors don't matter to the tailors. However, MTL much prefers to weave the colors one at a time. They want to complete a single Fabric before moving to the next, because preparation for each color is a significant task. So ... the weavers produce Fabric in a manner opposite to which the tailors wish to receive, and this also slows us considerably ... by months.

All told, easily two years from when we start spending money (buying wool from ranchers) until we have a garment completed for a customer. And that does not count the Rancher's timeline.

The scouring plant, the dyers, the tailors, the spinners, the weavers, the finishers … all of these pros are serving many other customers and so we may need to wait weeks or more before they are ready to work on WeatherWool. Or there may be personnel or equipment problems that cause delays. Much of the garment industry shuts down for a week or two in July.

The timeline also does not include potential supply-chain bottlenecks. Because some of our supplies, such as zippers and thread and buttons may have a lead time of months, we need to keep large surpluses on hand in order to be sure our operations are not held up.

Our Ranchers will begin working on WeatherWool more than three years before they actually get paid. And WeatherWool will be out of pocket for two years plus before we have finished garments.

This sounds like (and certainly FEELS like!) a very long time to me, but I don't have any other frame of reference.

As WeatherWool grows, we will be working more and more closely with our Ranchers and all our Partners and doing whatever we can to speed things.

There are still other significant wrinkles in the production. Sometimes the weavers or knitters won't like the cones on which yarn has been delivered ... won't feed through their machines smoothly. Reconing yarns can take significant time! (And not free, either.) Also, because our warp and weft yarns (warp runs lengthwise, weft runs horizontal) are mostly spun differently, and because we use a few different colors, it's almost a certainty that when the weaving is done, we'll have some warp or some weft left over. That's not a delay, but it is a big deal! It's expensive stuff, and we need to figure out what to do with it. The leftover yarns may not be used for yet another year or two.

THANKS to Advisor Bob Padula for the Rancher-section of the timeline.

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