A World – Class Yarn

In 2012, two tourists, Matt Scanlan and Diederik Rijsemus, got stranded in the Mongolian desert. When they left a month later, they had a wild story, lifelong friends, and the seed of an idea that in a few short years would turn the cashmere business upside down. 

- Adam Laukhuf

ON A CLEAR DAY IN JUNE 2015, Matt Scanlan loaded $2.5 million in Mongolian tögrögs into 32 plastic bags, stuffed them into the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser, and lit out into the desert.

Scanlan, the then-26-year-old cofounder and CEO of Naadam Cashmere, was headed to Bayankhongor province, one of the most remote regions in the world, located deep in the Outer Mongolian Gobi desert. Each year around the same time, the nomadic goatherds in the area gather in a local village to sell their yield, whichconsists of some of the finest cashmere there is.

Leaving from the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, Scanlan spent the next two days off-roading across unforgiving desert terrain with the bags of money piled so high in the back, the driver could hardly see out the rear window.

When he arrived, it was with a bold, risky plan, years in the making. When he left, he and his colleagues had 100 tons of cashmere, packed into a dozen tractor trailers, and the firm foundations of a socially conscious, sustainably sourced, ingeniously constructed clothing business that’s now on track to gross $22 million in its second full year.

And like many great entrepreneurial adventures, it all started with a phone call, a dive bar, a good friend, and some dumb luck.

SCANLAN WAS A FEW YEARS OUT OF NYU in 2012 when he quit his job as a qualitative analyst at a small venture capital firm in Manhattan. “It was way over my head,” he says. “Compared to a real analyst, I was an idiot. I was faking it. So I left, not really sure what I wanted to do. And that’s when Diederik called.”