Value and values in the making of merino

This chapter presents the example of recent developments in the New Zealand merino industry. It explores the link between economic value and other-than-economic values for both producers and consumers. The chapter focuses on business strategies designed to create assured value or price for New Zealand growers of fine wools and makers of garments. It shows how, in the mid-1990s, through the agency of the New Zealand Merino Company and its allies in the farming and textile and garment manufacturing industries, merino was created as a niche product differentiated from the national wool clip. The chapter emphasizes the tactics used successfully to identify and represent all merino as a high-value fibre, earning growers a premium price, albeit annually variable, when compared with coarse wool growers. The chapter identifies three overlapping types of embodiment in merino garments: those associated with active bodies, fashionable bodies and protected bodies. The standards established by international and national metrological organizations have their counterparts in industry.