Beside FREITAG’s Flagship Store in Zurich, a modest ten square metre kiosk is redesigning what a modern repair service looks like. The brand has opened a compact station devoted entirely to extending the life of its iconic truck-tarp bags, offering its most comprehensive line-up of fixes to date. Customers step up to a small service window, choose their repair from a simple menu, and return to the same spot to collect their revived bag, and with new express options, some returns happen within hours.
FREITAG’s bags have always been built for the long haul, yet the Zurich repair station shows how the brand continues to push its circular philosophy further. The FREITAG Bag Doctors are well practised in the art of resurrection; replacing closures and zips, refreshing bike tubes and straps, reinforcing seams and patching tired tarps. In 2024 alone, nearly 10,000 pieces were brought back to life, evidence of a community keen to repair over replacing. The new kiosk brings this service into the heart of the city, making restorations more accessible than ever before.
As a brand known for its resourcefulness, the new space reflects this ethos through the use of reused materials such an from an awning made from circular test tarp, to signage recovered from the FREITAG factory in Oerlikon. Part takeaway counter, part workshop window, the station offers long-trusted repairs alongside newly added services and free spare parts. The DIY programme, FREITAG Yourself, takes up residence here too, letting visitors tune, tweak and tend to their own belongings.
The kiosk forms part of a wider ecosystem built to keep products in circulation. Bag exchanges, rental schemes, design-your-own experiences and a growing secondhand initiative all contribute to their mission to extend the life of what it makes. Through its take-back service and specialist recycling partners, FREITAG has already completed the material loop for its first fully circular products.
A concise expression of FREITAG’s values and a place where much-loved bags are renewed to begin a new life and new stories, this pint-sized kiosk is set to have a much more sizeable impact on the way we think about product longevity.
FREITAG Repair Station Zurich Photography, courtesy FREITAG.
