The Fibrevolution tee shirt stands did brisk business at Terra Madre, selling short- and long-sleeved pure wool shirts proudly branded "Made in Italy" for 22 Euro ($30) a pop.
What the label didn't state was "Wool from New England, Australia".
Elena Schneider, who runs Fibrevolution as a sideline to the Schneider Group, her family’s famous wool broking business, highlighted a peculiar marketing challenge for Australia’s specialist woolgrowers.
“Made in Italy” is stated loud and clear because, Ms Schneider said, she wants to underpin her support for the social, ethical and environmental benefits of a managed production process in Italy - even when it puts her at a price disadvantage to a rival like Icebreaker, which manufactures in China.
But the wool’s origins are not directly stated on the label because, as a pragmatic businesswoman, she reserves the ability to source fine wool from anywhere that delivers the right product at the right price, whether it is Australia, New Zealand or South America.
Not that New England, which Ms Schneider acknowledges as one of the world’s pre-eminent sources of finewool, is left out of the picture.
Fibrevolution uses the Schneider Group’s Wool Track program, which allows consumers to take a code from their tee shirt and enter it on the Wool Track website www.tracciabilitalana.com to get a story and pictures about the producer the wool came from.
This approach handsomely acknowledges the work of individual producers, but neglects one of the powerful themes of Terra Madre and the adjacent food exhibition, Salone del Gusto: terroir.
Usually used by winemakers, terroir refers to the unique properties imparted to a food (or fibre) by its origins. The Slow Food experience is built around terroir: wines from a certain soil, cheeses from certain pastures, salamis made from pigs that roam a certain forest.
New Zealand has mapped out its own Merino wool terroir branding, helped by being a small country with some photogenic mountains.
But terroir is completely absent from AWI’s Australian Merino website - in fact, there are no references to Australia, word or image, outside the name.
When every bit of product differentiation is appreciated by consumers looking for something special in a world of mass production, that may be a mistake.
