With these firsts came another: the solid development of Mongolia’s cashmere industry, which had previously only been limited to small-scale production on a local level. Since the company’s early years, Gobi has been primarily export-based. The Mongolian government soon realized the high value of cashmere, and Gobi began to heavily produce arguably the best and most valuable cashmere products in the world. With the help of Japanese partners, the company quickly grew into one of the five largest cashmere producers in the world. When the Mongolian economy entered into a phase of transition in the early 1990s, the prospects for Mongolia’s oldest and perhaps most prestigious cashmere brand brightened even further. As demand for quality cashmere increased, cashmere production became one of the main sources of income for rural nomadic Mongolian herders, their families, and their communities.