Wool Merchant

You're buying and selling wool in its various processed states — raw greasy fleece, scoured tops, carbonized fiber, or processed yarns — between sheep producers, wool handlers, textile mills, and end users. Each transaction requires assessment: fiber diameter (micron count), staple strength, vegetable matter content, color, and yield after scouring all affect price. The work mixes commodity market awareness with the quality-grading knowledge to know why a particular clip is worth more or less than the weekly market indicator.

The workflow is relationship-driven and logistically complex. Wool moves from producers (farms and stations) through handlers and brokers to mills that turn it into yarn or fabric. You're typically sitting somewhere in that chain, buying from one side and selling to the other. Sample appraisal is central: receiving and evaluating core samples, negotiating based on test results, and deciding whether the price on offer makes sense given what the buyer on the other end will pay. Logistics — wool is bulky, perishable in its raw state, and often moving internationally — requires active management.

The harder part is operating in a commodity market with genuine quality variability. Wool prices move with currency exchange, global demand from Chinese mills, and seasonal clip quality — factors largely outside your control. What you can control is your quality judgment and your customer relationships. Relationships in this industry often span generations; the trading network is built on trust developed over years and decades, and new entrants earn it slowly.