How Two Friends Disrupted the Cashmere Industry, by Doing What Nobody Else WouldThe founders behind Naadam took out the middleman in the cashmere world, creating a win-win for the company and the herders.

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 co-founder and CEO ofNaadam 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, which consists of some of the finest cashmere there is.