Welcome back to IN THE RAW. This week I’m talking to Chase from the Woolshire, a family-run brand it’s been my privilege to support since it first entered the market a couple of years ago.
Chase and his wife Sierra make, totally by hand, the finest organic virgin-wool pillows you can buy today, using authentic American equipment and American-sourced wool.
This matters for a number of reasons: first, because what you sleep on is far more important than you probably think; and second, because the Woolshire offers a viable model for other small businesses to operate in a way that not only benefits their customers but also the wider community. Chase and I talk about all of this, and more, in today’s episode.
You can get 10% off your order with the Woolshire by using the promo code “REN” at checkout.
Visit thewoolshire.com and follow the Woolshire on Twitter at thewoolshire.
About the Woolshire
We got married in 2019 and built our home together in northern Idaho the following year over a long winter. As we moved away from our 9 to 5 jobs and focused on our own home and family, we grew toward a more natural way of living in the foods we eat, the clothes we wear, and the pillows we sleep on. We both find that while modernity does bring great comforts, it is also shortsighted in much of its innovation. The problems it claims to fix are often riddled with even more cancerous results that won't be known until we find the cancer to be terminal. This is why we find ourselves constantly looking to the past to find the solutions we need for the future.
Shortly after having our first baby in March of 2022 we decided that we wanted to greatly reduce the amount of synthetic materials in the home. It's becoming known that plastic is playing a role in infertility, reducing testosterone and sperm count, as well as causing increasing health issues. After learning that we were laying our heads on a conglomerate of plastics, glues, and poisonous chemicals for eight hours a night, we knew we had to come up with a solution. When we started to learn about the unique properties of wool, we decided it was the perfect material for a pillow. Wool is naturally flame retardant, self-cleaning, and temperature regulating. It retains its loft, is moisture-wicking, and it is very cozy. It has been used by humans for its incredible properties since the Stone Age.
We made many prototypes in the beginning to come up with our designs for our organic toddler pillow, our classic wool pillow, and our (not yet released) wool nursing pillow. We even made our baby his own all wool mattress! Once we came up with the perfect design we knew we needed to source our materials locally and manufacture ourselves.
The cottage economy is very important to us as we make our wool pillows directly out of our home. We believe it is crucial to work with other cottage industries to create a localized system of products to ensure quality, support family businesses, and contribute to building healthy local communities. In essence, we believe the best way to create natural pillows is to work with our neighbors.
We only live a couple hours from sheep country so we contacted a friend in Montana who pointed us in the direction of an early 1900s wool mill still in operation. The mill buys local wool from freshly shorn sheep, cleans the wool with organic soap, and then runs it through the carding mill which orients all the fibers in the same direction. We buy these wool batts to use in our natural wool pillows directly from them and know exactly the quality we are getting.
As with sourcing the wool locally, we sourced high quality organic cotton grown in Texas for use in our pillow covers. Sourcing from American farms reduces supply chains, supports small family farms, and assures us that we are getting the highest quality cotton available. The cotton is USDA certified organic and is also GOTS certified from start to finish, ensuring no adulteration ever occurs.
As the world moves faster and faster, we built something that allows us to slow down and really focus on working with our hands to craft the best natural pillow. The world needs less plastic, less chemical factories, and more organic fabrics, sheep, and quality goods. We started The Woolshire because we truly believe that we can make a difference one pillow at a time.
In the Raw 49: The Woolshire