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Natural Wool Cleaning Tools
Making household cleaning tools out of wool began as a sideline for Jo Andrews. After seeing a wool duster at a sheep association meeting in Iowa, she started making them and selling them at craft shows around Northwest Missouri. After attending a wholesale market in 1983, she came home with a sales rep, $300 worth of orders, and the beginnings of a real business. Thirty-five years later, her sons Allen and Jeff, along with relatives and neighbors, continue to run Wool Shop, the only remaining U.S. business to manufacture and sell wool cleaning products.
“Each fiber is tough and collects dust,” says Jeff Andrews, vice president of Wool Shop. More dust catches on the overlapping scales on wool fiber compared to the smooth surface of synthetic fibers.
  For quality and consistency, Wool Shop buys tanned wool from Merino cross sheep from an Australian source. The fiber has a protective film to make it scratch resistant, yet is durable for years of use.
  “These are great maintenance dusters. After you are done dusting, take it outside and gently tap it against something, then twirl it to fluff it back up,” Andrews says. “We also have a duster brush to straighten the fibers to fluff it up and separate fibers. You can also hand-wash it with duster shampoo.”
  Wool Shop makes a diverse line of products from 5-in. to 25-ft. dusters on hardwood, steel and aluminum handles (the 24-in. duster at $12 is popular) to mop heads to commercial dusters with durable plastic telescopic handles. They also have specialty items such as ceiling fan dusters, wooly wands to clean refrigerator coils, and dust mitts - all made with wool.
  “We sell (wholesale) to a lot of different stores and to a catalog company in Germany,” Andrews says. Retail customers can call the Wool Shop to find out if there are any stores in their area, or order through the business’ online store.
  Customers appreciate that the dusters and other cleaning tools use natural products and that Wool Shop is a family business that has been around for more than three decades. Wool Shop also works with sheep associations and other groups that want to sell their products for fundraising.
  Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Jeff Andrews, Lambswool Products, 21935 Highway E., Grant City, Mo. 64456 (ph 660 564-2444; www.woolshop.com; sales@woolshop.com).



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2018 - Volume #42, Issue #6