I listened to the Allbirds edition of the How I Build This podcast on NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730695224/allbirds-tim-brown-joey-zwillinger https://w

I listened to the Allbirds edition of the How I Build This podcast on NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730695224/allbirds-tim-brown-joey-zwillinger https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730695224/allbirds-tim-brown-... It's been a while, but if I recall correctly, they mentioned that sheep farmers in New Zealand were having trouble making money and finding uses of wool. (I might be misremembering, as I'd have to go back and re-listen.) And if anything on Clarkson's Farm is to be taken as an accurate portrayal of farming trends, sheep farming was portrayed as a very difficult and unprofitable business. So I am completely guessing here, but maybe sheep farming is just not popular like it was? Sheep farming being on the decline, at least in the U.S., seems to be at least corroborated by the following after a quick search: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/sheep-lamb-mutton/sector-at-a-glance/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/sheep-lamb-m... https://www.kunc.org/business/2013-10-09/the-long-slow-decline-of-the-u-s-sheep-industry https://www.kunc.org/business/2013-10-09/the-long-slow-decli... According to this article though, Japan is the third biggest importer of wool but only had 20,000 sheep, as of the article's date of 2014: https://www.fragmentsmag.com/en/2014/06/ami-tsumuli-4/ https://www.fragmentsmag.com/en/2014/06/ami-tsumuli-4/. So maybe in Japan, it's both an expensive enterprise to farm sheep and a lot of competition with imports. But that really doesn't answer why it wouldn't be used, which doesn't seem accurate if they're one of the world's top importers of wool, only behind the U.S. and China.