sincerely, wool& (2023 recap)

As we turn the page on 2023 and start the fresh chapter of 2024, the possibilities of the upcoming year are always exciting—full of big plans with what we hope to accomplish in the upcoming months. But we also want to reflect on how far we’ve come—and how our customers have shaped us in such a positive way as a brand.

In October of 2023, wool& turned five years old! This huge milestone quietly slipped past us without much fanfare while we were working hard to launch new styles, improve our existing styles, grow our team, and nurture our amazing online community. We’ve come a long way since we launched wool& in 2018 with one dress.

Here is a little timeline of wool&:

2018: wool& launched featuring one style (Rowena Swing Dress) in five colors.
2019: launched the Brooklyn, Sophia, Avery, and Clara dresses.
2020: launched the Sierra, Ellie, Willow, plus our first legging and bike short. We also created our Facebook customer community this year.

Fast forward to 2023

Our tiny team has grown to 18 full-time employees and 12 part-time contractors! This year we launched 29 new styles including our Roam Collection. We also introduced a new waffle fabric. You all shared input and we listened, making fit updates to some of our core styles, and replacing a few original styles with new items based on customer feedback. 

new arrivals

This was our largest annual release of new products in our five years of being wool&, but we’re still staying true to our slow fashion values. We do this by producing garments that are meant to last for a long time and are ethically produced along all aspects of our production journey: from the sheep that provide our wool to final delivery to our customers. If a product is loved by our customers and there is strong demand for restocking it, we will generally bring it back on a seasonal basis.

Company updates

Two trips to Asia
We believe in the importance of a traceable supply chain and transparency about our personal involvement with every step of our production process. This year several team members took two separate trips to Asia. Our development team visited Korea in March to oversee various aspects of production including the dye process and fabric development. You can check out some photos from the trip here.

In October, Mac (our founder) and Kristen (our Director of Product Development), visited all of our production partners and attended a factory opening ceremony. You can see our Instagram story about this trip here.

Sample Sale
In November, we held our annual sample sale—our biggest event yet! We loved our large pop-up location this year in the Lloyd Center Mall, and meeting so many customers in person brought joy to our entire team. Knowing these items (which can include samples, prototypes, slightly defective returns and factory seconds) are saved from a landfill is such a critical part of our mission.

Community Meet-ups
We held our first two official Community Meet-ups in 2023! Our first one was held in Madison, Wisconsin at a botanical garden and the second one was held in our home city of Portland, Oregon. Seeing how our community has formed relationships based on wool clothing and outfit repeating is incredible. Stay tuned for additional meet-up opportunities in 2024!

Expanded size options
This year we kept our promise to continue expanding our size options. We’ve added more plus size options (including 3X), as well as added long length to our Axis legging. We’ve also added a long length to plus size in one style, and will watch to see how it’s received by customers to determine if we should continue adding more of these expanded size options.

2023 By the numbers…

• We turned five years old!

• Feature UpVote board was launched in 2023 to allow customers to share requests with the wool& team and vote on what matters most to them. It now has 658 requests with 1,881 comments and over 60,000 votes.

• Our wardrobe challenges have had well over 10,000 completions including 7,000 for our 100 Day Dress Challenge and 3,000 for our 30 Day Dress Challenge.

• Our Facebook Community reached 20,000 group members.

• 30,000 of you follow us on Instagram.

• We added 20 new journal posts with style inspiration, how-to topics, and transparency about our company.

Balancing Act

In March we were featured on The Balancing Act, the morning show that airs on Lifetime TV! Such a fun experience to share about the magic of merino wool with so many people. You can watch the full segment here.