Every cashmere supplier says its fibre is soft. Far fewer will tell you how it was taken off the animal, and that is the step which decides most of what follows.
Ours is combed, not sheared. Here is what the distinction means and why it shows up in the finished garment.
What a cashmere goat actually grows
A cashmere goat carries two coats. The outer one is guard hair — coarse, straight, and useless for knitwear. Underneath it grows a fine, soft undercoat through the winter, and that undercoat is cashmere.
In spring the animal moults naturally. That moult is the window.
Combing versus shearing
Combing is done by hand during the spring moult. A comb draws out the loosened undercoat and leaves the guard hair on the animal. Nothing is cut. The goat is not stressed, and the fibre comes away at close to its full natural length.
Shearing cuts the whole fleece off. It is faster and cheaper, and it takes guard hair and undercoat together in one pass. It also cuts the fibre rather than releasing it.
Two consequences follow, and both are measurable rather than rhetorical:
- Fibre length. Cut fibre is shorter than released fibre, and shorter fibre pills more readily in the finished garment. Staple length is not a soft attribute — it is the main reason two sweaters of identical composition wear differently after a season.
- Coarse-hair content. Shearing mixes guard hair into the clip, which then has to be removed downstream by dehairing. More guard hair going in means more aggressive dehairing, and aggressive dehairing damages the fine fibre you are trying to keep.
Combing is slower and costs more per kilogram. It is the reason the fibre entering our spinning lines is what it is.
The numbers
Our standard cashmere fibre measures 15–16.5 micron with a 39–42 mm staple length.
Micron is fineness — how soft it feels. Staple length is durability — how well it resists pilling. Most suppliers will quote you the first. The second is the one that predicts how the garment looks in year two, and it is the figure combing protects.
Both are measured, not nominal. Fibre identity and fineness, composition and blend ratio, yarn, and colour are tested at an accredited laboratory at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology in Ulaanbaatar as standard — on our own production, whether or not a customer asks for it.
The standard set covers mean fibre diameter by OFDA and light microscope, fibre length, coarse-hair content to MNS 3913:2009 and MNS 2949:2008, quantitative composition, yarn count and twist, and colourfastness. Per-lot records are available on request.
That distinction — measured versus nominal — is worth pressing any supplier on. A nominal micron figure is a claim. A measured one has an instrument and a laboratory behind it.
Where the fibre comes from
100% of our cashmere is sourced from Mongolian herding cooperatives we work with directly. No brokers, no trading houses in between.
That directness is what makes the combing claim checkable rather than assumed. We are not buying graded fibre from a market and inferring how it was collected; we are buying from the cooperatives that collect it.
Traceability, stated precisely
We can link a finished product back to its source fibre, report which production stage a batch is currently at, and supply per-lot and per-stage records — including laboratory and QC results — on request.
Two honest qualifications, because this is an area where the industry overstates:
- This is a first-party record. Fibre is bought direct from cooperatives and every subsequent stage happens on our own site, so there is no external chain of custody to reconstruct — and equally, no third party attesting to it.
- We hold no third-party traceability certification, and we do not claim one. What we have is documentation, produced by us, available to you.
If your programme requires an external certification scheme, tell us early so we can be clear about what we can and cannot support.
What we do hold
Two certifications from the Mongolian Wool and Cashmere Association's accredited certification body: MNS 6926:2021 for sustainable textile production, and a certificate of conformity against MNS 6809:2019 (knitted and woven finished goods) and MNS 5820:2007 (cashmere yarn). We also signed the Voluntary Code of Practice for Wool and Cashmere Sustainable Production in 2021.
Seeing it yourself
Clients are welcome to visit the mill in Ulaanbaatar, and to send their own or a third-party auditor for quality inspection. Let us know ahead so we can schedule around production and have the right people on the floor.
For a direct assessment of the raw material, a fibre sample is $25 and ships immediately from stock.
Enquiries through the quote request, answered within two working days.
Related guides
See also sustainability, certifications, and quality control.