The business was launched in 2020 in the middle of the North Island by Sophie and Sam Hurley.
After seeing single-use plastic bags being phased out two years beforehand, Mrs Hurley, who grew up on a Canterbury farm, began thinking about an alternative from New Zealand-grown wool.
From this first idea of a shopping bag, the couple have developed a baggage and accessories business with a range of about 60 products from wool sourced from their third generation 3300ha farm, Papanui Estate.
Honest Wolf has a flagship shop in the small town of Hunterville as the base of the business, expanding over the past five years to employ 10 women locally.
"We sell in our store and that’s about 20% of our business and the rest is online.
"We are holding ourselves back from exporting at the moment because [while] we are doing it, we are not marketing and that’s because we are growing at a pace we want to keep up with and want to export where we can consistently have product to be able to sell.
"We could go a lot faster than we are, but we want to do it properly."
She grew up on a farm "deep" in hill country, and then embarked on a career in marketing but after returning home from a trip overseas she soon tired of the long commute.
"We moved back to the farm and found my career opportunities limited ... and I didn’t want location to be a barrier to continuing what I had previously done so we explored various business opportunities.
"One that stuck was trying to utilise our wool that we grow on our farm in a new way and not reinventing the wheel, but utilising what we have and turning it into something that told a story what was happening on a farm and putting it into a product.
"It’s landed into a range of luggage accessories."
The goal was to create a sustainable product from plenty of local wool and ultimately drive out a better farmgate price.
"So, we pay above market rates for our wool that we use in our product; that’s the main goal.
"Using what we’ve got here in NZ and we’ve got such a powerful story to tell on farm, the connection we have from start to finish whether it be our meat or wool, there is so much story telling to say internationally."
The bags had a topographical map of their farm in them to let buyers know the beautiful fibre was produced in New Zealand, she said.
Honest Wolf told its own story through the farm-to-manufacturing stages on social media including on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and lately TikTok, as well as its website.
She said its posts gave an honest account of what happened on the farm through to the end product.
Small business owners operating in rural regions often helped one another out, she said.
"I think it gives others confidence if you have got this idea to keep pushing, don’t say no.
"We had a lot of no’s at the start and if I had listened to them and if I didn’t have my demanding husband say ‘keep going’ then we wouldn’t be where we are."
Initially wanting to manufacture felt in New Zealand, they found a way to build a business from their farm near Hunterville even though finding a manufacturer in India was not easy.
"There was a couple of years in the process to make it happen and it was just having the strength through those no’s to make it happen, keep pushing and realising if there is a big problem we can solve that from our little old farm."
During a presentation, she encouraged meat professionals attending the Meat Sector Conference in Christchurch to be innovative and develop new products from farmed meat and fibre.
"Utilise being so remote and at the bottom of the world. That doesn’t matter and don’t let location be a barrier."
