WoolVreign was born out of a need to share the miracle that is wool with all babies. The small farm, Blauwkrans-Wes, situated between Graaff-Reinett and Jansenville in the Karoo, Eastern Cape was the starting point and is still the heartbeat within WoolVreign.
This is a beautiful area, but so hard, arid and mostly very dry – but with an abundance of beauty – from the smallest succulents plant, Karoo bossie, Aloe, those newborn lambs to the vast night skies, where it feels like you can see the whole universe.
Behind Woolvreign is Denet, Marius & Sebastien Blignaut. They are an enthusiastic and caring family spending a lot of time outdoors and enjoying Gods beautiful creation. They spend as much time as possible on the farm and Sebastien has been involved in the farm animals from birth.
“Lambs will always have such a soft spot in my heart,” says Denet.
They initially used a sheep fleece for Sebastien at around age 1, he used to suffer from terrible heat rashes – as the temperature on the farm can reach up to 38˚C for weeks in summer – they were so amazed at the miracle of sleeping and playing on these fleeces that they knew that they had to share this with the rest of South Africa!
They started tanning their own lamb fleeces, which ended up being much, much harder than they thought it would or could be. Marius being a real innovative entrepreneur sourced valuable information of this industry, from over the whole of South Africa and as far as New Zealand who eventually paved the way to being able to manufacture, source and finish the final product that we currently market and sell.
“We knew we would have to package the fleeces in such a way that made it a product,” said Marius and with Denet & Marius’s creative & packaging background they created an impactful packaging solution that immediately captured the attention.
They decided to market WoolVreign at the Mamma-magic Winter expo 2016 in JHB for the 1st time. “ I still remember carrying these wool fleeces into the expo hall, with a 4-year-old Sebastien, thinking – how are we selling sheepskins at a venue where everything else is so modern and shiny?” Through Denet & Marius’s determination, personal experiences and customer education on why Lamb Fleeces are so absolutely fabulous for babies & toddlers, they finished the show with almost a sell out of fleeces & obviously, no voice.
“We have had so many returning customers, but I think the one mom that really stood out, was a new mom of triplets, she bought one fleece, the biggest one we had, with the intention of cutting it to fit the 3 car seats. She was back the following morning with such a smile, buying 2 more, because the one baby that never sleeps, slept on the fleece and did not wake mom once during the night”
It was such a blessing to have met and talked to 100’s of parents, grandparents and sharing this gift God gave us in wool & lamb skins with so many happy babies. To have since then been able to sell our fleeces at 6 of the baby expos nationally and also have an on-line shop available for 24hour shopping. Obviously, the demand now exceeds what we are able to produce on our land, but as proudly South African Family and Farmers we still use only the best quality lamb fleeces available.
The current range (available at www.woolvreign.co.za) consist of medium wool, rustic fleeces but keep an eye out for the new range that will be available at the Winter Mamma-magic JHB show during the middle of May 2018.