NAADAM

Matt Scanlan and Diederik Rijsemus were stranded among goat herders in the Gobi Desert for three weeks in 2013, learned how the cashmere trade actually worked, and noticed the brokers were taking most of the margin. The following year they drove back into the desert with millions of dollars in cash in plastic bags and bought fibre directly from the nomadic herders, cutting the middlemen out completely. That is still the model, and it is why the cashmere is priced the way it is.