Covid and the production of our jacket Lana (part 1)

As for most, Covid came unexpectedly for us and hit us with full force. After the first weeks of the Lockdown in March and a certain surprise, April was far from the best month of sales. In this regard, a little luck for us at the time. However, what was slowly noticeable was the devastating effects that covid would have on our supply chain. At first there was talk of a few days, maybe a week late at the fabric supplier in Portugal. Ultimately, there was a lockdown in all production facilities of our European partners. As a result, our planned developments and productions were abruptly placed on standby. The Legna T-shirts sold very well at this time, but we had no more access to new fabric. The development of the jacket Lana, which had been running for over two years, also abruptly came to a standstill with the factory lock of our Croatian partner.

We came into a difficult situation. We had a fully functional website, satisfied customers, but no longer the possibility of obtaining new products to fill up the warehouse or to launch new products.

But of course we were far from putting our heads in the sand. With the greatest reprint, we continued to work on solutions in the background in these uncertain times. The Munagnard project always dealt with complete traceability and closeness to the partners. From the beginning we decided that we should not go further than the European neighboring countries to procure our raw materials and to build up our production. Covid changed these parameters with closed borders and travel restrictions. It forced us to find an even more detailed solution within the borders of our own country, Switzerland. First we started to evaluate how we could produce our Legna T shirts in Ticino or Lucerne. Then we examined how we could continue the development of our LANA jacket, using the entire STF resources in Zurich and explored new production facilities in Switzerland.

So we came across an unexpected encounter. We discovered a small textile factory in the canton of Schwyz, just 30 minutes from Zurich, in the charming village of Rothenthurm. So far, our attention has been paid to industrial factories, which for other brands in large production slots have hundreds, if not thousands of pieces. This production facility is called Schuler Manufaktur 6418. It is family -owned and is still operated by the family. It is primarily devoted to the production of uniforms for music groups or traditional Swiss costumes. The local know-how and the love of the product were immense. Our world has just been thrown by an industrial complex in a universe of craft, Swiss traditions and mass design.

At the end of May the borders and factories started to reopen. With our Croatian partner we were able to develop our Jacket Lana resume. In the meantime we had fallen in love with the Schuler Manufaktur, but we were still in the early stages of discussions. Since it was so important for us to finally launch the jacket for autumn 2020, we decided to concentrate on a single model for men and to produce only 100 pieces in Croatia. This was our "Lana First Edition" jacket, the first jacket on 100% bio-based and biodegradable jacket.

The Lana jacket was finally on the market, and we knew that soon more would come ...