Located in Lerwick, the capital town of the Shetland Islands, Jamieson & Smith are long established as the island’s primary purchaser of the Shetland Wool clip. We annually purchase the raw fleece from over 700 local crofters and farmers.
A 2009 trading standards investigation into all of the major raw wool purchasers of Shetland revealed that we do, in fact, purchase over 80% of the wool produced in Shetland.
The company was founded during the 1930’s by the Smith family of Berry Farm, Scalloway, and as the business grew we relocated to our current premises in Lerwick.
In 2004 the company was sold to the current owners- Curtis Wool Direct, a wool group based in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
J&S continues to be staffed by Shetlanders, and is a stand alone company, in that the profits received from the sale of Shetland wool and Shetland wool products come back into the Shetland economy and are passed along to the wool producer.
Conveniently located on Lerwick’s Old North Road and overlooking the harbour, our premises are ideally situated for the Island’s farmers and crofters to deliver their wool clip. We are only 5 minutes walk from the picturesque capital, Lerwick, and our shop and woolstore provides a point of interest for visitors who may be interested in the Island’s rich craft history and wool industry.
We have traditionally catered for all scales of Shetland ‘s wool production and accept deliveries ranging from 10 kilos through to 6000 kilos every wool season.
Each supplier’s clip is weighed in and recorded on a computerised tracking system which automatically allocates a grading number.
The raw wool is then carefully hand graded according to its quality and the breed of the sheep it originated from. We try to use all of the wool we purchase to ensure minimal wastage. When we hand sort each fleece, the finest grades of Shetland wool is put into our yarns for knitwear manufacture and the coarser grades of wool are then sold on to other purchasers who use it in the manufacture of other high quality Shetland wool products such as carpets and mattresses.
Products which have been manufactured using Shetland wool which has been bought through us usually carry the 3 Sheep Logo.