Our Story

We are Visionaries.

We are Artists.

We are Revolutionaries.

our Medium is Bison.

A Letter from Our Founder

I’ve spent the last 21 years working with alpaca, wool, and bison. I started in the shearing sheds and continue to shear alpacas and bison professionally. About 14 years ago, I was the first professional shearer to attempt bison. I began my journey with a bison fiber processing plant in Brush CO and I quickly saw how amazing and beautiful the bison fiber is. 

I started bison shearing for a sock company that was trying to get enough fiber to be able to scale in order to meet demand for their products. While working with the fiber I realized that North America’s rarest natural fiber has never been handled with the level of care expected in serious textiles. I asked myself, “how many people have vicuna or cashmere socks?” However, there I was, working with the American equivalent of vicuna or cashmere and the company I was contracted for was only making socks with it. Great socks for sure but there is so much more than socks.

Where most people saw a byproduct of the meat industry, I saw a remarkable undiscovered fiber that had the potential of cashmere.  It simply needed to be harvested and handled properly. And that realization 14 years ago led me to dream of building a fully domestic bison fiber supply chain starting in the shearing shed and extending all the way to finished cloth.

Great textiles begin in the shearing shed.

Our work starts with proper shearing and careful fiber handling. Every batch of fiber we work with is source-verified bison, professionally shorn, sorted, and graded before it enters processing. Respect for the bison is the throughline for our commitment to their fiber.

Through the Montana Bison Fiber Collective we have built our bison fiber supply chain from the ground up. We begin with professional shearing and fiber grading, then work with our partners at American Woolen in Stafford Springs CT to blend, spin and weave the fiber into amazing cloth. Our first textile is a 21 oz 30% bison and 70% American merino fabric designed for heritage garments. Our Ember Heritage Brackett Creek JacShirt is a proof of concept for the fabric cut and sewn in New Jersey.

At the same time, we work with select heritage and luxury partners, combining bison with established noble fibers to create materials that did not previously exist.

The result is a durable and beautiful cloth and textiles built for real use from bison, North America’s rarest natural fiber.

Best,

Peter Connelly
Ember Heritage Founder and CEO