The House of Fibre is very blessed. We opened on the 5th of May with all personnel fit and ready to work. In the first week, we weighed in over 70 000kg of mohair and 27 000kg of wool. So, we are quite busy!
The valuation of catalogue B11/19 will be e-mailed on Friday the 15th of May. It was extremely difficult to value, because of all the current uncertainty. Our marketing team have decided to do the valuation based on the Rand value achieved on the last sale before lockdown. We did not take into consideration the 12% weakening of the exchange rate, because our marketing information indicates to us that we will be lucky just to maintain the Rand value. Our team will do their utmost best to contact everybody before the sale to discuss the marketing strategy, however, do not hesitate to contact us directly or through your field officer with instructions before the sale.
We expect that 31 micron and finer will sell satisfactory, with 32 micron and stronger mohair less fortunate. The House of Fibre auctioneer will not allow the market to drop more than 10% and we will rather recommend that farmers look at the option of going into the industry pool system. During the House of Fibre‘s market research in the past week, a few points of interest cropped up, for instance:
1. Luxury purchases dropped by 40% from January to March. 2. There will be a strong “discount” consumer mindset for the remainder of 2020. 3. Consumer sentiment took two years to recover after previous global crises. 4. Sustainability is a megatrend currently and this phenomime will be used to regain consumer trust post-pandemic. (House of Fibre teams active again to do registration) 5. Luxury brands that develop an emotional reason for existing are most likely to recover first. (Mohair South Africa is doing a lot of good work in this field)
The House of Fibre likes to be the leader in technology and will launch a first for the mohair industry this coming sale on the 19th of May. No farmer can attend the mohair auction and only one person per company can attend. To counteract this situation, the House of Fibre will broadcast the sale live on the House of Fibre Facebook page for everybody to follow (Search for the House of Fibre Facebook page and click on the live video.) We will WhatsApp a link on a later stage if you want to follow direct via the internet. To make things more interesting, a 20-minute discussion of the sale results will follow at 18h00 the evening on the same platform.
We also welcome Petrie Maré in the House of Fibre team as our new Manager: Animal Genetics & Development, based in Graaff-Reinet. Chris Curtain will also join The House of Fibre team on the 1st of June as a technical field officer. We are privileged to acquire the services of these two gentlemen to complete our team.
