What’s So Hard About Mass-Marketing Lamb & Wool

In the past, when I’ve pointed out that for many decades this nation hasn’t really marketed flock products, some folks mistakenly thought I was pointing the finger of blame at them or at their cherished institutions.

Let me be clear:  It’s no association or official’s fault that U.S. sheep products are so hard to mass-market.  Our nation’s lamb and wool varies so much in character from breed to breed and in growing methods that these products are nearly indefinable, and thus not readily mass-marketable.  This is starting to become true of the global sheep biz too.

For example:  The term “wool” means a lot of contradictory things.  There is a separate sheep-sourced fiber for each of the following uses:

• Heavy mattress-stuffing
• Plaster reinforcement.
• Firm, resilient, durable carpets.
• Silky-smooth tapestries
• “Bouncy” outerwear.
• Non-springy weaving warp.
• Felt of all descriptions
• Non-felting wool comforter fill.
• Delicate, no-itch undergarments and baby-clothes.

These highly-varied uses can be further categorized into sub-classes produced or modified by myriad husbandry and handling practices. Yet customers (wrongly) know all wool is the same—it all itches (wrong), it all shrinks (wrong), and it smells (definitely wrong—plastic textiles are what that makes you stink).  For garments and furnishings, wool is today’s supreme comfort textile, but the public doesn’t know it.  Why?

Well for one thing, we can’t promote all wool one way.  Ethically, a promo campaign paid for by all growers must benefit all growers.  It won’t help most U.S. growers if we promote wool as if it all provided “soft, next-to-skin comfort,” because most U.S. flockmasters don’t grow that kind of wool.

So we just shout “buy wool!” and hope some buyers get the kind they like.

Similarly, we also can’t in truth claim “U.S. lamb is mild-tasting,” though we’ve all seen promos that claim just that.  The first trial pack of gamy lamb bought by a new buyer heeding that call wins only an enemy.  There are even absurd, self-cancelling sales pitches saying things like “savor the rich, mild flavor of our lamb….”  C’mon, which is it, rich or mild?  If it can’t be defined, it can’t be marketed.

Practically every book on sheep-keeping contains a chapter or two on “marketing.”  But in the books I’ve read, I’ve rarely seen anything on marketing, only selling tips.

Marketing means “find a need, then fill it.”  Promotion means “try to get folks to buy what you already produced.”

There seems to be little interest in real marketing in the sheep biz.  Widespread belief that it’s just promo may be a reason why U.S. sheep numbers have steadily declined for nearly 60 years.  The decades have seen many officials come and go who claimed they were marketing sheep products yet they didn’t know or just disregarded the difference between that and promotion.  Again and again, the only thing proved was that promotion without marketing didn’t grow the nation’s sheep industry.

Promotion can get “trendsetter” types to buy once; marketing builds the health of overall demand.  Promotion only initiates illusory, temporary “test-buying.”  But consumers repeatedly buying flock products are what keep sheep growers in business.  Flock-product promotion is important, but marketing has to come first.  When we promote without marketing, buyers cannot sense any concern for their needs in our approach, which is why we miss the mark.  When we aim at nothing, we always hit it.

We as growers have for many decades been paying for what we thought were marketing services through dues, head taxes, check-offs, fundraisers, etc.  That makes us the “customers” of these services—we are the ones with the money.  Yet despite all the millions of dollars spent, Americans now consume far fewer U.S. flock products—both overall and per capita—than they did 50 years ago.  And this, despite growth in population and buying power.  Many of us sheep-grower “customers” are wrongly convinced that every penny of the money spent so far has made life better for us.  This drives home an incontestable point:  Customers aren’t always right, even when the customers are us.

Sheep meat has been growing in popularity among Spanish-speaking people for decades.  A few years ago, labs were testing public reactions to flavor and breed of sheep meat in Spain, and they concluded the following:

Both pre-slaughter factors [breed and liveweight] should be taken into account in the specifications of quality labels in an attempt to offer consumers a product with homogeneous characteristics, which could help to increase consumer loyalty, especially if the product is similar from one purchase to the next.—Dept. Animal Prod. & Food Science, Univ. of Zaragoza, Spain, Aug 31, 2004

The cost of doing business in sheep boils down to 3 things:  Land, labor and the capital.

      Land can be had cheaper by either renting, or by the traditional method of grazing marginal land no usable for anything else.  Or land can be made more productive via fertilization, rotation, irrigation, etc.

      Labor can be cheapened by taking advantage of guest worker programs, or (better) eliminating labor costs altogether via easy-care breeds, better fencing and better equipment.

      Two conventional ways to cheapen the cost of capital are:  (1) Think big; economies of scale in theory allow ever-cheaper production, which lets us chase ever cheaper lamb prices; or (2) Get a piece of Middlemen’s Pie, taking over more of the steps between you and the consumer, by selling direct to consumers or at least to retailers.

      Consumer satisfaction means more than just low price, however.  A race to the bottom price is less profitable than a race to most preferred product.  Follow the monkey:  It will do just about anything for the taste it prefers, but may just throw that cheapest product back in your face.