OUR STORY
Tradition guiding innovation.
Big Wool grew from a simple question asked on a windswept New Zealand hillside in 2019: how can we do better for the place we call home?
For almost five decades the McKimm family had been furnishing New Zealand homes - a proudly Kiwi business built on straight talking, hard work and the belief that quality should be accessible to everyone. But the sight of discarded sofas and mattresses piling up at landfills made it clear that the old way of doing things wasn’t good enough anymore.
The family went back to their roots…to the land and the people who work it. Their first step was introducing recycled materials like Seaqual and Repreve into everyday sofas and beds, turning plastic pulled from the ocean into something useful again. It was a start, but not the whole answer.
The turning point came while visiting a friend’s farm, watching him bury strong wool because there was no market for it. That moment set everything in motion. Strong, resilient, abundant and deeply tied to the values of Aotearoa, New Zealand strong wool had been overlooked for too long. With proper research, testing and a fair bit of grit, the family saw its potential not just as a material, but as a movement.
They doubled down, purchasing two East Coast sheep and cattle stations and bringing them together under the banner of Big Rural. They invested in their first strong-wool needling machine and began building a new supply chain from the ground up - one that supported rural communities, lifted the value of strong wool, and feed innovation across furniture, bedding, packaging, building insulation and beyond.
That innovation has since carried Big Wool far beyond New Zealand’s borders. Today the company is partnering with some of the world’s leading furniture and design innovators, and strong-wool products born on East Coast hillsides are now appearing within international luxury brands.
Big Wool stands on the shoulders of a family business that has been New Zealand-owned and operated since 1973, but its eyes are fixed firmly on the future. The mission is simple: create products that serve people well and serve the land even better.
‘For us, real change starts close to home. Big Wool is lifting our farmers, reducing waste and supplying premium New Zealand wool that global design leaders are seeking out in innovative ways.’
Tom McKimm, Big Wool Director