Arc’teryx ‘Innovates’ On Repairing

When covering tech — particularly start-ups — I’m often presented with new “innovations” from brands, which I’m told will revolutionize the world, improve the way we live, or be some other variant of “impressive and “important,” but are just gimmicks. There are usually more straightforward pre-existing solutions that do the same thing, but the new way is flashier and gets more headlines.It’s slightly rarer to see this enter the fashion world, but this week, we saw that with one of the more “technical” fashion brands, Arc’teryx, and their new patches. Namely, if you believe their marketing copy, “SV Insert Patches” will keep your waterproof jackets in use for longer, as they are now easily repairable.If your jacket snags on a branch or just rips over time with hard use, you can bring it into their ReBIRD Service Centers, and — for free —a patch can be heat pressed to your jacket, maintaining the water proofing and bringing it back to new performance.As it’s straight from the manufacturer, you can get patches matching your jacket’s exact color and material; but you can also get different colors, creating a far more unique look for your item.Given that most Arc’teryx jackets never leave a city center, the latter seems to be the leading choice, with visible mends being quite in — inspired by Japanese mending styles with kintsugi for pottery and sashiko for fabric.It’s stylish, and technically impressive, but it’s also not actually that innovative. Tenacious tape and other patches won’t look as good, nor will they have the same waterproofing performance in a lab setting, but in the real world, they’re more than acceptable. And given the scarcity of ReBIRD centers, it’s lucky that’s so.The other thing is that other companies will just provide a good repair policy within their warranties, in a hum-drum, unflashy way. Patagonia is famous for this, repairing zips, elastics, and so forth, with few questions asked. Gant provides free lifetime repairs on their jeans, and the denim is great to start with.But neither of them get headlines. And here I am, writing about the Arc’teryx ones. So, I guess they got what they were hoping for.

Arc’teryx ‘Innovates’ On Repairing

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