Last month, the Dutch social enterprise United Repair Centre (URC), which mends clothing from performancewear brands such as Patagonia, Decathlon, Arc’teryx and The North Face, opened its second international outpost in Paris. The 3,000-square-foot hub joins existing URCs in London and Amsterdam, repairing approximately 55,000 items a year for over 35 clothing brands and now employing 51 tailors.
“Paris is a unique opportunity,” explains URC founder Thami Schweichler. “There’s a strong culture for longevity there: France is paving the way on repair legislation, Europe is following, and the world is looking at Europe.”
Clothing repair is a key component of the circular economy — along with rental, resale, and remaking — and more brands are offering it as a service. According to Sarah Robins, textiles and circular economy specialist at the NGO Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP), “The last couple of years have seen a big drive, with M&S partnering with Sojo, Primark with The Seam, and success stories like URC.”
But repair is operationally complex, with inconsistent volumes, large variability between jobs, and relatively expensive labor. “Repair doesn’t scale with volume,” notes Kirsty Emery-Laws, program manager at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. “It still takes the same amount of time to change a broken zipper.” Emery-Laws estimates the rise of fashion repair to be in the single-digit percentages. “It’s not the biggest growth area,” she says, “but there’s momentum. As the cost of living increases, it will become the norm, as fewer people can afford to buy new.”
The global repair map
What is required, then, for the business of clothing repair to scale more easily? Could France, with its legislative advances, become the blueprint? France has the most established Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy for textiles. This means brands that sell clothing in France are required to contribute to a fund that extends the product lifecycle and manages end-of-life when it comes. This includes a repair fund, which finances a consumer voucher scheme, giving discounts on services at approved clothing repair partners. France has also approved a lower VAT rate of 5.5% on repair services.
URC is not the only fashion repair service expanding into France. Last summer, London-based Sojo opened a repair store in Paris’s Westfield mall, which is now the business’s “highest performing” Westfield shop, says Sojo founder Josephine Philips (it has two in London, plus a Selfridges concession). Sojo, with its 50 staff, also has a business-to-business (B2B) arm, facilitating fashion repair for 16 brands, including M&S, Arket, Ganni, and Reiss; a consumer repair app with home collection and delivery; and is one of France’s 600-plus certified textile repairers. Similarly, London-based Save Your Wardrobe, which provides 18 fashion partners such as Maje, Sandro, and Loro Piana with the tech support, and sometimes tailors, for a fully integrated repair service, opened a Paris office in 2023. On the brand side, Barbour and Veja have launched standalone repair shops in the French capital, in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
