Castleberg Outdoors have stocked Icebreaker merino wool products for several years and they are a perennial favourite with staff and customers alike. Once you have tried their super soft, non-itch, highly absorbent baselayers you are sure to return for more and more! Here is a little insight into the history and beliefs of the brand...
How Icebreaker began…
In 1994, a close encounter with a sheep changed Jeremy Moon’s life. Jeremy’s girlfriend introduced him to Brian Brackenridge, a merino sheep farmer she’d stayed with while hitchhiking around New Zealand. Across the table, Brian threw Jeremy a prototype thermal tee-shirt made from 100% merino wool.
“It felt soft and sensual, looked lustrous and was totally natural,” says Jeremy. “It was nothing like the wool I had grown up with, which was heavy and scratchy. And you could throw this stuff in the washing machine.”
Jeremy, then a 24-year-old marketing graduate, wondered if he could sell enough of the prototype fabric to visit his girlfriend in the US. But when he wore the tee-shirt in the outdoors, he became so enthusiastic about merino’s potential that he never saw his girlfriend again – she was jilted for a sheep (actually, a whole flock of them).
Working from his HQ – his bedroom – Jeremy wrote a business plan with the crazily ambitious goal of developing the world’s first merino layering system for the outdoors, and creating a global business in the process.
Synthetics dominated outdoor clothing, and you could barely give merino away. “Don’t talk to me about wool. Wool is dead,” a buyer told Jeremy on his first sales call.
From Hobbit Clothing to Global Success…
Icebreaker’s early styles were kind of ugly. The sleeves of the garments in the first delivery were six inches too short – great for hobbits; not so great for people. “We had our first range of clothing for 10-year-olds,” says Jeremy. The original Icebreaker range was so tiny the whole collection fitted in Jeremy’s granddad’s battered old suitcase.
It took three years for Icebreaker to make its first profit – of NZ$800. “This is the first company I’ve been involved in where you can drink the profits and still remain sober,” said Director Noel Todd.
But Jeremy’s secret weapon turned out to be merino itself. When people tried on Icebreaker, they loved the way it felt. They loved the fact that it was made by nature. And they loved the way it performed, in the wilderness and in the city.
Today, the Icebreaker apparel system has grown to include underwear, mid layer garments, outerwear, socks and accessories for men, women and kids. You can buy Icebreaker in more than 3000 stores in 43 countries.
Our HQ isn’t in Jeremy’s bedroom any more – which is good news, because there are 350 of us now. We’re still based in Wellington, New Zealand, but we also have offices in the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
What Icebreaker believe…NATURE IS BETTER THAN PLASTIC
Our role is not to create the latest “technical” fibre. Nature has already done that, and without an oil rig in sight.
Merino wool was born not in a lab, but in the mountains of New Zealand. The Icebreaker fibre factory works 24 hours a day, on the back of a sheep.
Sustainability is at the heart of Icebreaker, and we aim for profitable sustainability — a business model that balances ecology with economy.
It’s possible because nature is an astonishing designer. Everything it creates is simple, efficient and beautiful.
We believe nature is a powerful force that is within us and around us. We have harnessed this force to become the passionate world leader in merino.
