Reporter | Xu Tao
Edit | Zhang Yunting
On April 24, Swiss backpack brand FREITAG released the Mono PA6, a black backpack made of polyamide 6 (PA6), a new nylon material. The first batch of 1,500 Mono "PA6" backpacks will be sold through a few channels such as FREITAG's flagship store in Zurich, China's Shanghai store, and Seoul by June. Later this year, FREITAG will launch more Mono "PA6" backpacks.
FRIDAY 新系列背包Mono。
In the past, recycled truck tarpaulins were supplied through European trucking companies, and FREITAG's production chain was controlled within 2,500 kilometers of its headquarters in Zurich, while the supply chain for the new Mono "PA6" backpack was mainly distributed in Asia. The raw materials for the new PA6 backpack were sourced in Asia by the textile developer in cooperation with FREITAG, followed by the production and assembly of the backpack at the Vietnam factory, with some of the accessories coming from China, and finally the finished product being shipped back to Zurich from Vietnam.
FRIDAY 新系列背包Mono可拆卸小包。
In a way, this means that FREITAG, once a European independent design brand, is becoming global. The choice to source PA6 raw materials in Asia is due to the fact that the FREITAG team found that Asia has more mature PA6 production resources than Europe.
The Mono "PA6" series of backpacks is mainly made from virgin PA6 materials and is not recycled from used materials, as FREITAG currently produces the Mono "PA6" series in quantities that are much lower than the minimum order quantities for recycled PA6 fabrics in the textile market. Either way, the use of this virgin material is different from the brand narrative that FREITAG originally gave people. In 1993, brothers Daniel and Markus Freitag washed the truck's tarpaulin in the bathtub of their apartment, cut and sewed it into a messenger bag that was strong, durable and waterproof. Trucking tarpaulins come in different colours and patterns, and are cut by the designer to become unique FREITAG bags.
FREITAG's first messenger bag, F13 TOP CAT, photographed in 1994.
This intriguing entrepreneurial story has become one of FREITAG's most iconic marketing stories. Like most independent brands, FREITAG does not have traditional advertising and marketing placements, and relies more on media coverage, offline events, and word-of-mouth communication to connect users and convey the brand message. The Freitag brothers' story of how they recycled truck linoleum and designed it into "recycled" products has helped to make FREITAG an "unforgettable" brand.
In 2003, FREITAG's first product, the F13 TOP CAT messenger bag, was included in the permanent collection of the Design Department of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and an exhibition dedicated to FREITAG was held at the Design Museum Zurich.
But this time, instead of using recycled truck tarpaulin, FREITAG seems to have lost its uniqueness by using a new nylon material – for many consumers, the lorry tarpaulin has almost defined the Swiss brand FREITAG.
From a recycling point of view, FREITAG was one of the first companies in Europe to start using second-hand materials. At the end of 2017, in an interview with YiMagazine, FREITAG co-founder Daniel Freitag said: "When we first started, I didn't even know how to speak sustainable in English. However, because we live in Switzerland, there has always been a good recycling culture, which we were taught from childhood that trash is not garbage, but the nourishment of something new. ”
But it's still one step away. In June 2023, FREITAG announced a new product launch plan to make backpacks using the new material PA6 instead of truck tarpaulins, with the goal of gradually moving towards a closed cycle of zero waste. Anna Blattert, FREITAG's Circular Technology Expert, explained at the time, "It's not enough to develop recyclable products, we also have to design products holistically, consider their life cycle, and make sure that everything that can be recycled is truly back in circulation." ”
Truck tarpaulins are strong, durable, and waterproof, but the main polyvinyl chloride (PVC) material still ages. FREITAG has introduced a repair program, set up an exchange platform, and encourages users to give away their old backpacks to others to maximize the life of the backpack. But FREITAG knows that it is still inevitable that its products will end up in garbage.
"We've put a lot of effort into it, but because we're using a non-recyclable material, we're never going to be able to solve this small but actually huge problem, which is that at the end of the product life cycle of these backpacks, people still need to throw backpacks in the trash. Elisabeth Isenegger, head of the FREITAG brand, told YiMagazine.
Backpacks made of truck tarpaulins are also difficult to become materials for new products, and the best possibility is to downgrade and recycle. FREITAG backpacks are usually made up of materials such as truck tarpaulins, discarded car seat belts, and bicycle tire inner tubes, which, together with sewing and other processing techniques, make FREITAG backpacks as difficult to recycle as other brands.
FREITAG's designers had the idea of replacing truck tarpaulins with new materials early on within the company, but the project officially moved forward around the beginning of 2021. According to Elisabeth Isenegger, the development of new materials in the textile industry is accelerating, partly due to the push of recycling technology experts, which is what FREITAG is seeing. Within FREITAG, new positions have been created called Circular Technology Specialists, who need to use their expertise and dedication to move the company towards a circular economy as quickly as possible.
The new FREITAG collection of backpacks Mono is recycled.
Over the past few decades, EU countries have become more and more sophisticated in formulating sustainable development policies, involving environmental governance, product design, and new energy industries. In addition, the European Union has introduced a rigorous sustainability plan. In December 2019, the European Commission announced the European Green Deal, a new climate change policy, proposing the goal of achieving "carbon neutrality" in Europe by 2050.
In addition, the EU has tightened restrictions on sustainability claims by companies. In March this year, the European Parliament voted to adopt a policy to combat "greenwashing" in product labelling and advertising. The policy strictly restricts companies from disseminating false advertisements and information that are not supported by evidence, such as "eco-friendly" and "recyclable" product claims, and imposes fines of up to 4% of annual sales on companies that violate serious regulations.
Previously, FREITAG had already started working on the development of new materials. In 2022, FREITAG began working with Covestro (formerly Bayer Materials Science) and Heytex to develop recyclable truck tarpaulins, with the goal of retrofitting existing truck tarpaulins and planning the material life cycle from the source.
However, the truck's tarpaulin itself is good enough to meet the needs of truck companies to protect customers' goods, as well as the needs of individual consumers. If the truck tarpaulin was to be replaced with a new material, FREITAG needed to achieve similar properties to the truck tarpaulin, as well as the final recycling process with the material quantity reduced as much as possible.
After experimenting with a variety of materials, FREITAG chose the easily available PA6 as the base material and developed a three-layer composite fabric in collaboration with a textile company made of PA6 for the lining, waterproofing membrane and outer fabric. After more than two years of R&D and multiple rounds of testing by FREITAG, including in collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering of the Albstadt-Sigmaringen University of Applied Sciences in Germany, FREITAG has developed the PA6 fabric to meet the brand's needs in terms of durability and water resistance.
The FREITAG team encountered new challenges when developing new materials. A typical case is staining. FREITAG tried to dye the prototype of the backpack and found that some of the accessories were not dyed because they were not made of PA6 as claimed by the supplier, and FREITAG was forced to restart the procurement process. This is something that FREITAG does not need to consider when applying truck tarpaulin materials. In addition, FREITAG has eliminated the white version of the Mono "PA6" backpack, mainly due to the yellowing of the white fabric over time. FREITAG may develop more colors for the Mono "PA6" backpack series in the future.
This led to the need for FREITAG to re-validate the feasibility of the recycling process. If the Mono "PA6" backpack reaches the end of its useful life, FREITAG wants to recycle it all. In the recycling process, FREITAG reuses the TPU material used to recycle ski boots to make mobile phone cases, and FREITAG's partners will be responsible for recycling the Mono "PA6" backpack, accumulating the corresponding quantities, and then crushing the backpack into reusable pellets.
Recycled phone cases made from ski boots.
In fact, FREITAG is already gradually reducing the use of recycled linoleum materials. Initially, FREITAG used 100% recycled PET material for the lining of the tarpaulin bag, which did not affect the appearance of the backpack. In February 2019, FREITAG launched a new range of backpacks that combine truck tarpaulin with recycled PET made from recycled PET bottles from Swedish partner We aRe SpinDye®.
Now, FREITAG is developing a new product with a new nylon material instead of truck tarpaulin, which is equivalent to a more radical product from 2019 onwards. Elisabeth Isenegger describes the new Mono "PA6" backpack as "probably the most FREITAG product".
The concern is that the new Mono "PA6" may be challenging consumers' perception of the FREITAG brand that truck tarpaulin represents, after all, as mentioned earlier, the brand's entrepreneurial story is inextricably linked to the material of truck tarpaulin.
However, Elisabeth Isenegger told YiMagazine that the launch of the Mono "PA6" backpack may help the brand convey clearer values.
"We don't just define ourselves by trucking tarpaulins. The launch of this new FREITAG backpack reflects our ambition to move towards a circular economy, and the appearance of the new product also helps to convey this to our customers. "If the customer is in the store, we try to explain to them that they will accept a new FREITAG image – one that is closely related to our brand and that it is future-proof." ”
Over the past few years, more and more users have been carrying FREITAG bags on the streets of Chinese cities, and China is now the second largest market for FREITAG. After 2023, FREITAG will also have more channels to communicate directly with consumers in China. In March 2023, after opening the Freitag Store Shanghai By Harbook+ in collaboration with Zhang Zunxiang, the founder of Harbook+, FREITAG opened its first directly-operated store in Shanghai in the residential area of Jiaozhou Road. The launch of this new series also covers the Chinese market.
In Europe, FREITAG became a popular product at an early stage, and some consumers even regarded FREITAG as a souvenir of Swiss tourism. A European user of FREITAG once wrote a Reddit post in 2016 in which he made his observation: "There are many different styles of FREITAG, and every hipster in Germany, Austria and Switzerland has one. ”
FRIDAY苏黎世总部。
European consumers also seem to be receptive to the diversity of the FREITAG brand. On the global market, backpacks made of recycled PET for their outer fabrics account for about 5% of FREITAG's total product sales, compared to about 4% in China.
Compared to the European market, Chinese consumers are more familiar with FREITAG backpacks made of truck tarpaulin as a label of personal identity. In an interview with The Spin Off magazine in 2017, Daniel Freitag, co-founder of FREITAG, analyzed how brands are perceived in different markets: "In Asia, individuality is the main factor in our success. Many Japanese or Koreans feel that wearing our bags is a way to express their individuality. "The same thing is happening in the Chinese market.
But this also means that it may take more time for Chinese consumers to identify with the sustainable values that the FREITAG brand represents.
For FREITAG, which is determined to be a more circular and sustainable brand, truck tarpaulin materials are both its most successful brand story and the next challenge.
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