At Veja’s “Repair Friday” event hosted at its Paris headquarters from November 29-30, 300 people attended and 500 repairs and diagnostics were completed. Focused on fixing damaged items, from sneakers to furniture to electronics, the event aimed to boost customer loyalty and reinforce its sustainability message. And it served as a sharp contrast to Black Friday’s shopping frenzy.
“Black Friday is 24 hours of crazy promotions on anything and everything,” said Sébastien Kopp, co-founder of Veja. “There’s the ultimate rush and then nothing. The money is gone, the joy is gone, and the purchased items become useless.” Since 2017, Veja has refused to partake in Black Friday sales — and, with the exception of its outlets, it doesn’t discount throughout the year.
For Repair Friday, Veja enlisted other brands, NGOs, and repairers from Vitra, Repair Café, Cyclocare, Anti_Fashion Project, Aurélie Chadaine, À la Ville à la Montagne and Recyclivre. Together, they offered leather repairs, clothing mending and electronics diagnostics, among other services. Items they fixed included Eames chairs and damaged clothes. Veja repair services typically range from €10-€100 ($10.50-$105), depending on the service, but for Repair Friday, fees were waived. Veja, which paid for the other repairers’ services, declined to share its investment in the event. It promoted Repair Friday in social media posts, on its website and in email marketing.
Kopp said hosting events such as these is important to changing consumer behavior. “Sometimes just a cleaning can make people fall in love with their shoes again,” he said. “Through cleaning services, we increase the emotional durability of the product.”
In 2020, Veja launched the Clean, Repair, Collect project to encourage customers to repair their shoes instead of discarding them. To date, Veja has opened 10 cobbler spaces around the world, which have repaired over 35,000 pairs of shoes from Veja and other brands.
Last year, Veja hosted a “Free Friday” event, offering free repairs for one pair of sneakers per customer at any of its cobbler locations. In 24 hours, 450 pairs of shoes were repaired. The brand declined to share whether it sees a boost in fourth-quarter sales as is typical in the industry.
As reported in January, Veja’s 2023 sales were €300 million ($315 million), marking an increase of 18% year-over-year.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the fashion industry significantly contributes to global textile waste, with approximately 85% of textiles ending up in landfills or incinerated. In the U.S. alone, this amounts to about 11.3 million tons of textile waste each year, representing 7.7% of all municipal solid waste landfilled.
“The overproduction of goods is a major environmental and social issue,” said Kopp. “We want to focus on making items last longer and producing in a smarter way.”
Veja is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in sustainable footwear. In 2022, the brand introduced sneakers featuring B-Mesh, a lightweight, breathable and water-repellent fabric made from recycled plastic bottles. And in 2019, it launched styles using Cotton Worked as Leather, a vegan and bio-based material made from organic cotton coated with polyurethane, corn starch and ricinus oil.
France is creating legislative mandates on product repairs to push brands in the right direction. The Anti-Waste and Circular Economy Law, implemented in 2020, encourages more sustainable design by requiring brands to provide a “repairability index,” allowing customers to assess a product’s repair potential. In addition, the European Union’s Directive on Common Rules Promoting the Repair of Goods, effective from July 30 of this year, requires brands to make repair options more accessible and affordable.
Looking ahead, Kopp said he’s optimistic that more brands will follow Veja’s lead, though added that he’s less concerned with the actions of others. “At Veja, we don’t talk about the future; we shape it through concrete actions,” he said.
