When Jeremy Moon first tried on a t-shirt made of merino wool, down on an isolated South Island farm in Marlborough (surrounded by 8,000 sheep), he knew he was onto something special. The singlet felt remarkably good – close-fitting, comfortable, warm. And it was 100% natural. The farmer who’d made the singlet had done nothing special to it. It was, Jeremy recalls, not exactly a fashion statement – but the potential was there to be seen.
So Jeremy faced both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity was the value of wearing merino wool. He was sure people would pay for an experience like that. The challenge was communicating that value: how would people know that wearing merino was so worthwhile?
Jeremy’s answer was icebreaker. From startup in 1994, the company is now a global brand, with the majority of their merino-based clothing sold overseas. The brand stands for naturalness, beauty, and performance. In large part through the efforts of Icebreaker, merino wool is now widely known as a premier clothing material – the chief ingredient of high quality, outdoors-ready, natural clothing.
Jeremy Moon himself had little business experience when starting Icebreaker. He was 24, and after his first 80 page business plan and facing his first potential investor, he still didn’t know what accounts were. Early mentoring from people like Peter Travers, a former banker, and Noel Todd, a highly respected businessman, was invaluable. Peter and Noel became both investors and directors – providing safe hands that could direct governance while Jeremy learned the day-to-day tasks of building and running a business. And they still are.
But even with their help, it wasn’t easy. Says Jeremy, “I always felt that I knew what to do next, but not how to do it. Every day was a huge learning experience. I became a good listener and learnt how to ask the right questions, and how to find people who could help… and I made sure I thanked them.”
Jeremy has found that the challenges change as the company grows, but they don’t stop. As he tells those who are starting their own businesses, the key to facing challenges is being proactive and highly goal-oriented. You’ve got to start with where you want to be and what you want to achieve, and work backwards to the present, filling in the necessary steps to make the goals. Only in this way can you hope to set the agenda for the challenges and work out where to allocate time.
The Icebreaker brand is now well established. But there’s no resting on laurels. Jeremy continues to drive initiatives to promote Icebreaker’s kinship with nature and the integrity of the brand – such as Baacode, a unique tag assigned to each garment that allows the entire production history, right back to the sheep stations that produced the wool, to be traced. This gets the customer as close as possible to Jeremy’s original experience: standing on the farm, surrounded by the sheep, trying on that first t-shirt.
Tags: baacode, icebreaker, jeremy moon
