Annotations - quality

It’s fashion and luxury but we built it with substance. We use the highest quality cashmere fibers sourced from our nomadic friends in Mongolia’s outer plains. These garments don’t pill, they don’t fall apart, they are incredibly soft and they are durable. They fit better and get softer every time you wear them.

The main mesage of the Kickstarter campaign focuses on how Naadam is producing the "perfect sweater"; the prototype illustration shows a cardican made of "100% Mongolian nomadic cashmere" with antique brass zipper, hood, cable knit pattern, and a weight of 600 grams. The term "nomadic" is used frequently ("urban nomadic lifestyle"), potentially appealing to millennial consumer who wants something that matches the cultural capital of contemporary urban young adults (note the hoodie, the "vintage" brass element, the accessible cost, the exoticism).

“What we’re selling is a quality product at a much lower price because we’ve removed layers of traditional function,” Scanlan says. Born as a direct-to-consumer brand, Naadam currently has three stores in New York City

(as a mechanism for lowering prices)

This was a consensual process from both sides, with herders stepping up and willing to have their goods marked in return for training on better practices and the hope of opening markets to paying price premiums for truly sustainable and high-quality cashmere.

(the experts who provide "training on better practices"),

One of the first actions Kering took was to help improving goat-combing, in order to make the process cleaner and more efficient. Local herders have learned how to sort cashmere by quality, packing the different grades into cotton, rather than plastic bags. Cashmere fiber quality is also now being augmented through improving goat husbandry and breeding. The project also supports veterinary services to improve the health and condition of goats.

(as livestock health)

In 2014, through the Sustainable Cashmere Project (now known as the South Gobi Cashmere Project), Kering partnered with the Wildlife Conservation Society (https://www.wcs.org/) to help herders reducing the impact of upstream cashmere production and switching to new sustainable models in the South Gobi Region of Mongolia. Over the last five years, the Group has been working with herder communities and NGOs to improve fiber quality, pasture management and biodiversity conservation

We want to highlight and draw attention to the nomadic people behind the raw materials, generating cruelty-free cashmere and yak fibers, while adding the Swiss sensibility for quality in the creation of lasting, exceptional products. The Swiss design component will ensure that our garment specifications, used for manufacture in Mongolia, yield high quality, functional and sustainable luxury for you.

The brand also introduced the Loro Piana Cashmere of the Year Award in 2015 to support the highest standards of quality. This year the winner produced exceptionally fine fibers only 13.6 microns in width—five times thinner than a human hair.

In an industry often criticized for waste and unsustainable practices, Loro Piana strives to maintain a virtuous circle for its excellent fabrics, based on animal welfare that produces pure, natural cashmere fibers.

note the connection between animal welfare and quality

For more than six generations, Italian company Loro Piana, the world’s most revered wool and cashmere brand, has been sourcing the finest fibers from some of the most inhospitable places on Earth to create its famously exquisite fabrics and garments. After decades of buying its raw cashmere fibers directly from selected herdsmen from Inner and Outer Mongolia, in 2009 it launched a sustainable development program, the Loro Piana Method, with universities in Italy, China and Mongolia. This initiative aims to further improve the impeccable quality that Loro Piana’s devoted customers expect of its cashmere, support smaller herds through selective breeding, preserve the ancient and complex craft of harvesting the precious under-fleece, secure a premium price for the herdsmen’s precious fibers, and protect the local ecosystem.

(but not necessarily "improved" breeds?)

Quality is our priority. Enforcing the strictest standards throughout the entire manufacturing process, from raw material to final product, enables us to offer our clients premium cashmere We are campaigning for the protection of animals and the environment and have always mad a point of complying with social standards.

#quality #standards (applied by the manufacturer)

With reliable material and manufacturing partnerships in place, Frances Austen shifted focus to long-lasting durable designs in the sweaters themselves. Dedicated to using the finest fibers (15 micron), the goal of less pilling leads to durability and a softer feel over the life of the garment.

For production, the company partnered with Johnstons of Elgin, a family-owned factory in Scotland. In business for over 200 years, it is the largest employer in the small community of Hawick. Long associated with luxury and an emphasis on craftsmanship, Johnstons of Elgin is a name known for its socially responsible practices.

(as "craftsmanship")

Erdos has been following a path of sustainability for decades, long before it became a fashion buzzword; commercial reality dictates that the company ensure that the horned animals have quality pastures to graze on. “It is natural for us to do, as we own the whole supply chain,” she says. “If the grassland is wrong, we are the victims. If the goats are good, we benefit from it, so it is in our interests to keep the grasslands well and to preserve the breed of the goats and to treat them well.”

Tina Stridde, managing director of AbTF, says, “The Good Cashmere Standard provides a standard for the important resource cashmere. It meets increased consumer demand consumers want to be certain that the textiles they purchase were produced in accordance with social and environmental standards and that no animals were harmed in the process.” The new standard now offers businesses their first opportunity to sell products made from certified, sustainable cashmere wool from Inner Mongolia. “The demand for The Good Cashmere Standard is correspondingly great. This sends an important signal t

to get international recognition we also need to focus on improving the quality of our fibre. We have seen a reduction in quality over recent decades and this is making it harder to compete with China on the global market. Often our fibre is blended with Chinese fibre to achieve the quality standards required by the luxury market. This is something that we need to address urgently.

Batkhishig goes on to note that there are good quality cashmere fibres in Mongolia, but they are "mixed with low-quality fibre and its value is lost".

It is well known that Mongolia produces high-quality cashmere. Our fibre is fine, warm, soft and durable and it has good elastic qualities for manufacturing high-quality garments. There are many other distinct features such as its electrical resistance, resistance to humidity and its breathability.

Response to the question "What makes Mongolian cashmere valuable?" #quality -- defined here in technical terms.

there’s the issue of quality: a lot of companies claim to source from Mongolia, but are actually purchasing wool from Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of northern China.

Chugani works with source partners in Mongolia who maintain high quality as well as the ethical production methods.