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Durable quality products live up to the company’s sustainable way of thinking and adhere to the traditional Swabian value of thriftiness. Maier Sports has been highlighting this approach for a while with its 5-year warranty against defects in material and workmanship. Furthermore, the brand carries out any such repairs in their own sewing department.

 

The EU Commission is strongly considering making products more durable and easier to repair. What the electronics sector sees as a radical reform and the industry partly as a revolutionary threat has been reality for decades within Maier Sports, the German pants and fitting specialist.

 

Three highly qualified seamstresses. who learnt their trade at Maier Sports, replace zips, mend seams, sew on buttons, buckles or loops, pull in new drawstrings “and sometimes even make the impossible possible,” Agnes Neeth, Technical Manager, explains. “We don’t simply discard defective products. Instead, we always try to repair our high-quality clothing wherever possible,” the clothing technician, who also manages Maier Sports’ collaboration with the Fair Wear Foundation, continues to describe the brand’s way of thinking and acting.

To provide this repair service, Maier Sports employs not only three long-standing specialists, but also maintains an extensive warehouse. It holds numerous yarns in a host of colours and weights, zips, buttons, elastic and many more accessories. As an outsider, you might get the impression that the employees spend most of their time looking for a needle in a haystack. But the specialists know exactly what they are looking for and where to find it.

“Now and then we receive products whose five-year warranty has long expired,” Stefan Taft, the Marketing Manager, states. In fact, he enjoys this direct consumer contact. “People often feel attached to their cherished hiking pants or jackets, associate unforgettable experiences and beautiful memories with them,” he knows from the accompanying letters.

“Even then we try to use our professional expertise to get the products back to their original condition, at least in functional terms. But after ten years or more, we can’t always promise that we will be able to use the very same yarn or identical button. But our specialists always manage to get it looking very similar to the original, more or less,” the marketing head waxes lyrical. Countless, very personal thank-you letters show him that people really appreciate this Maier Sports service. “It often turns Maier Sports customers into Maier Sports fans,” he adds.

“We even take it one step further when it comes to sustainability,” Lothar Baisch, the Sales and Marketing Director at Maier Sports, discloses further. “If we get a product where a repair is no longer feasible because of the effort it would take, then we salvage it, just like the car industry does,” the  Swabian native reveals. Zips especially are highly coveted for the “spare parts warehouse” as their many colours and lengths make it extremely difficult to follow through, we find out. But the cutters and seamstresses also use their practised eyes and subtle fingers to save buttons, belts, buckles, badges, etc. before the “residual textiles” are subsequently recycled and given a new lease of life.

Maier Sports is aware that the sewing department is not necessarily financially viable. But as a company that thinks and acts sustainably, it’s simply a matter of credibility and conviction. Long before repairing products became a marketing tool, it was a natural decision for the company to mend clothing worthy of being saved.

“And when it comes to quality products, where a lot of effort has gone into their development and production, it’s always worth it,” according to Taft.

Here you can find more information about the 5 year guarantee.