We’ve been pretty quiet on our social accounts the last couple of years, so we thought it was time to reintroduce ourselves. Alpaca Passion is a family-run alpaca store in Daylesford, Victoria. We’ve been operating in town since August 2008 and we also breed alpacas through our alpaca stud, Buckland Alpacas.
Liz and Keith cofounded the alpaca business in 2003 when both their kids moved out of home, and they were looking for some livestock to graze their chestnut orchard without damaging the trees and land. Their obsession with alpacas quickly took over and they grew their herd from three to over 100 alpacas. Nowadays they are a renowned alpaca stud with people sourcing their animals from across Australia and the world.
They started Alpaca Passion to showcase the products made from the alpacas they were breeding. At the time, not much was known about alpaca wool and what makes it special, and it wasn’t widely used or sold outside of South America, the home of the alpaca. A lot has changed since then and alpaca wool is favoured over other natural fibres because of its incredibly soft handle, warmth, and lightness.
Commercially alpaca wool is blended with a lot of other fibres, both natural and synthetic, with some “alpaca” garments containing as little as 5% alpaca. What sets our product range apart is that all our garments, homewares and accessories contain a minimum of 70% alpaca, and we only blend with other fibres when it is necessary for the structure of that garment, like using elastic in our socks, or it enables us to use the alpaca yarn in different and unique ways.
In 2016, Liz and Keith’s daughter Cassie joined the business fulltime after working in visual merchandising and product development. Liz and Cassie launched their own label, A.P. MODA, in 2017 and have been designing and sourcing their range in Peru since. Cassie has had a small hiatus from the business for the last few years after welcoming her son Ollie into the world in March 2021 and relocating to Sydney, but after making the move back to Kyneton and giving birth to her second son Archie in July, she has now gone into partnership with Liz and Keith to continue Alpaca Passion’s future into the next generation.