Renting of baby clothes: Räubersachen

Räubersachen logo
Type of organisation or company
Country
Germany
City
Halle / Saale
Language for original content
Project elaborated in partnership
No
Submitted by
Dr. Caroline Huyard
Start/End date
Ongoing
Yes
Type of funding
Description

Clothes of babies and young children (below 3 years of age) need to be replaced often (ca. every 2 to 6 months), because babies and children grow rapidly. The conventional (read: linear) answer is to provide low-quality, cheap products that are basically thrown away after usage by a single child. Reuse within a family can sometimes be an option - provided children are of the same sex and are born at the same time in the year - a rare occurence.

Selling and buying second-hand products is also widespread - but at prices that are extremely low (because the buyer knows that the seller has no use of the product), and thus with a strong economic loss if the product was bought at a high initial price. Therefore, the products circulating on the second-hand market are of very low initial quality - and thus do not last long, meaning that their capacity for reuse is very limited.

Räubersachen ("robbers' loot" in German) applies the concept of rental to baby and children's clothes. It rents and repairs these clothes, made of organic wool or of a combination of organic wool with silk and/or organic cotton, in four stages of wear: new, very good, good, "robbers' loot" (visibly repaired).

Main results

Räubersachen achieves the following results:

  1. producing clothes of highest quality, so that they last long - and are well adapted to the baby's and child's needs;
  2. clothes manufactured under good social and environmental conditions, mostly in Europe; 
  3. woollen clothes keep naturally clean, with very limited need for washing, thereby reducing detergent usage and pollution of freshwater; 
  4. creating employment in repair operations.