Peter Crone, managing director of John Marshall & Co. Ltd., believes the bedding industry holds an important key to the continued success of his wool exporting business.
To ensure that his product plays an increasingly prominent role in sleep products manufacturing, Crone is working with strategic partners in the United States to develop new ways to use his company’s branded Joma Wool. To raise the visibility of the brand throughout North America, he also has hired a U.S.-based consultant with extensive bedding industry experience to shepherd product development and grow sales.
| BRIEFLY | |
| Company | John Marshall & Co. Ltd. |
| Headquarters | Christchurch, New Zealand |
| Specialty | New Zealand wool, including its Joma Wool brand |
| Founded | The company was started by Fred Marshall in 1932. |
| Ownership | Managing Director Peter Crone bought the company in 1991 and is now its sole owner. |
| Learn more | www.joma.co.nz |
Crone joined John Marshall, which is based in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1984 and purchased the company in 1991. The enterprise was founded in 1932 by Fred Marshall, who passed the business on to his son, John Marshall, in the early 1960s. The company later was sold to Fletcher Challenge, a large corporation that once owned a multitude of farm-based businesses in New Zealand. Crone acquired the company from Fletcher Challenge and is now its sole owner.
The world of wool
Wooly work – New Zealand wool generally is taken from crossbred sheep, whose resilient coats are ideal for use in products such as mattresses, mattress pads and carpets.
John Marshall is among the top 10 wool exporters in New Zealand. The company sells its product throughout the world, with an increasingly large percentage of its raw wool going to China and India.
“Asia is our primary market in terms of volume, but there is so much price pressure that realistic profits aren’t there,” Crone says. “In China, it’s all about price.”
About 10% of the wool John Marshall purchases each year is used to produce the company’s high-end Joma Wool.
New Zealand wool, in general, is taken from crossbred sheep, whose coats are resilient enough to be effective in weight-bearing applications, such as mattresses, mattress pads and carpets. Joma Wool is created by crimping the wool, which increases its bulk by 40% to 50% and further enhances its natural resilience. Each fiber of the wool functions as a miniature spring and the vertical alignment of the fibers and crimp work together to create a cushion under the body that facilitates air circulation. This helps to diffuse water vapor and regulate temperature, “creating a natural comfort zone for sleepers,” Crone says. Wool has other characteristics—it’s flame retardant, nonallergenic and mildew resistant—that make it appropriate for use in a wide variety of sleep products.
Home base – John Marshall & Co. Ltd. has headquarters in Christchurch, New
Zealand, and two distribution centers in the United States.
Eight years ago, John Marshall and Aotearoa Wools, a wool processing company also based in Christchurch, joined forces to launch Wool Technologies Ltd. Together, the companies created enhancements for Joma Wool that specifically target the needs of bedding manufacturers.
Halo Washable Wool from Wool Technologies is a high-bulk material that is chlorinated and then treated with Hercosett resin to give the fiber anti-felting and shrink-resistance properties. Applying HealthGuard or UltraFresh anti-microbials gives the sanitized wool an even greater “halo” of protection, Crone says.
The company offers two other “super-washed” wools. Hi Bulk Scoured Wool is a high-loft down wool that’s scoured clean. Hi Bulk Cleansed Wool results when the scoured wool is carded and then randomly opened. The finished fiber is quite even, making it easier for textile manufacturers to run on synthetic fiber cards, Crone says.
Teaming up
Crone hired Tom Taylor as vice president of sales, marketing and development about three years ago to help identify potential strategic partners, particularly in North America. Taylor has had a long career on both the manufacturing and sales sides of the nonwovens segment.
“Capability is key, of course, with strategic partners, but they must also commit to work with us in a very focused way,” Taylor says. “We need them to have a zeal for the product, take ownership of the process and pay close attention to quality.”
John Marshall found such a partner in Glenoit Fabrics (TT) Corp. in Tarboro, N.C. Together the companies have produced two sliver-knit fabrics with direct applications for bedding. Sliver is wool that has been carded, but not yet twisted into yarn. Sliver knits are double knits, in which the backing fabric is yarn and the face fabric is sliver.
Crone calls Joma Merino Pure Sliver Knit “a sophisticated fabric with many benefits, including year-round comfort and temperature regulation” and adds, “We’ve educated a lot of people that, at the right weight, wool under ticking and in duvets slows the heart rate and reduces back pain and allergies.”
Weight is key, Taylor explains.
“Wool had historically been included in mattresses at all price points, but at lower price points the wool was blended so that the wool concentration was only 10% to 15%,” he says. “Anything branded Joma in the marketplace has to have 3∂ pounds of wool in queen size, which is the amount that positively affects sleep.”
The ‘Joma’ difference – Products that carry the Joma Wool brand must have at least 3½ pounds of wool in queen size.
In the past, wool was used only in layers of innerspring mattresses, but that’s a limitation Crone and Taylor intend to eliminate. John Marshall, in conjunction with Glenoit, is developing a four-way stretch, sliver-knit fabric that can be used on innerspring, specialty and hybrid mattresses.
And the company is working with a foam supplier to produce a soft visco-elastic foam specifically designed to be used with wool.
“Foam is now an essential part of building a bed, even innerspring beds,” Taylor says. “We need to be part of this market growth.”
Going for growth
Although sales to U.S.-based bedding manufacturers account for only about 10% of John Marshall’s total annual revenue, Crone sees growing the U.S. market, and North America in general, as key to his company’s future.
“While all manufacturers are cost-conscious, we have found that bedding manufacturers in the U.S. are prepared to pay for quality and branding if you can demonstrate the benefits of your product,” Crone says.
And Crone is doing everything that he can to make it easy for North American manufacturers to do business with John Marshall.
“We’re hands-on with everything we do,” he says. “Customers deal directly with us. There are no middlemen.”
For his part, Taylor makes sure customers know that doing business with John Marshall means having the owner’s full attention.
“When Peter gets involved with customers, his focus is always on what can be done to grow their business,” he says. “He wants to sell wool, of course, but he really wants to be a partner in their growth.”
To meet the just-in-time delivery needs of sleep products manufacturers, John Marshall has set up two distribution centers in the United States, one in Charleston, S.C., and another in Los Angeles. Part of Taylor’s job is to make certain that U.S. manufacturers never have to deal with the time and distance challenges that can arise when doing business with a supplier on the other side of the world.
Increasing sales in North America will help John Marshall deal with a host of pressures squeezing New Zealand’s wool industry.
“Worldwide, the wool market has shrunk dramatically,” Crone says. “We had a peak of 72 million sheep and now have about 28 million. We now buy 600 to 2,000 bales of wool a week at auction as opposed to the 4,000 to 6,000 bales a week that we used to buy in the 1980s. We want to be the best and we like to think that we are at the top end of the trade, but it’s a highly competitive, low-margin/high-turnover environment. Most business conducted by exporters is on a ‘forward sales’ basis. Our customers want guarantees on pricing as much as 12 months out, which can prove interesting when we’re selling a product that we don’t own yet in a currency that we don’t have any control over.”
In spite of the challenges, Crone is optimistic.
“In 2011, we began to see signs of improvement, which may have been due to increased demand for environmentally friendly product or to actual economic improvement. It’s hard to tell, but our 2012 sales were up 20% over 2011,” he says.
Taylor is convinced the future is bright.
“John Marshall is a very strong company and we focus on the long term. The product has value and products with value don’t go away.”
