Since acquiring Alpaca by Design in early 2022, we very much knew that simply buying wholesale and selling retail was of no interest to us.

We needed it to be more than just another retail store.

Having worked & visited Peru in various capacities from professional to humanitarian, including with non-profits like Quechua Benefit, we were intimately familiar with the less-than-ideal conditions much of the population lives in, so we wanted to help close the gap between this wonderful product and the people & processes behind them.

We needed it to be a way to introduce & educate people on the alpaca, its magically sustainable fiber, its history & origins, and, most importantly, we ached to give back to the people & communities who rely on the alpaca for their very existence.

In March 2024, we returned to Peru for the first time since pre-COVID to connect with more of those artists, co-ops & value-aligned brands & organizations. Our aim is to give back to these communities through various ways from providing additional equipment and resources, to providing them with more business to help them level up.

In fact, we have a whole new section in our brick & mortar store of hand-made items that came back with us from those very artisans you see in the pictures & we aim to build on those relationships & create more over time.

We want to make this sort of positive social impact part of Alpaca by Design’s DNA.

We are very aware that while alpaca garments are a necessity in their native lands, here they are a premium product, so we want to ensure our customers they’re doing good when they purchase that magical natural fiber product from Alpaca by Design.

Which is why we made it our aim to do our small part in helping our customers understand a bit more about the uniqueness of this very special animal and those very real humans behind the product they gift us with.

We hope you’ll agree,

...it just feels so natural…