Goats produces long, curling, lustrous locks of hair. The entire body of the goat is covered with hair and there are no guard hairs. The locks constantly grow to four inches or more in length. Angora crossbreeds have been created to produce mohair and/or cashgora on a smaller, easier-to-manage animal. The wool is shorn twice a year, with an average yield of about 4.5 kg .
Most goats have softer insulating hairs nearer the skin, and longer guard hairs on the surface. The desirable fiber for the textile industry is the former, and it goes by several names (down, cashmere and pashmina). The coarse guard hairs are of little value as they are too coarse, difficult to spin and difficult to dye. The cashmere goat produces a commercial quantity of cashmere wool, which is one of the most expensive natural fibers commercially produced; cashmere is very fine and soft. The cashmere goat fiber is harvested once a year, yielding around 260 g (9 oz) of down.
In South Asia, cashmere is called "pashmina" (from Persian pashmina, "fine wool"). In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Kashmir (then called Cashmere by the British), had a thriving industry producing shawls from goat-hair imported from Tibet and Tartary through Ladakh. The shawls were introduced into Western Europe when the General in Chief of the French campaign in Egypt sent one to Paris. Since these shawls were produced in the upper Kashmir and Ladakh region, the wool came to be known as "cashmere".