Tag: Repair

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Repair as an ambition loop

In my previous post I wrote about how United Repair Centre are creating the infrastructure that is renewing repair in the fashion sector. 

I think their work is a great example of an ambition loop beginning to form. 

An ambition loop is a simple model for system change that connects three drivers:

  • Community need
  • Business opportunity
  • Political priority 

When these align, they can reinforce each other and allow a system intervention to scale. 

In the case of United Repair Centre, we can see all three drivers in place and beginning to reinforce each other. 

Community need

There is a need for meaningful work. 

Repair offers:

  • skilled employment
  • a route into employment 
  • the revaluing of craft that is at risk of disappearing. 

Business opportunity

Brands are under pressure to reduce waste, particularly in countries like France where the imperative for company take-back of waste is so high. 

Businesses also the opportunity to see repair as a valuable differentiator. 

There’s a chance to build stronger, longer-term customer relationships. 

Government priority

  • Reduce waste 
  • Create employment opportunities
  • Growing interest in onshoring work. 

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Repair brings these drivers together into a reinforcing loop.

By training repairers through their academy, United Repair Centre creates a workforce that can reliably deliver repair services.

Businesses can then offer repair, building customer loyalty while diverting materials from landfill.

Government gains confidence that industry can respond to circular economy legislation.

This, in turn, drives more businesses to adopt repair, and more people into these roles.

What’s interesting is that change here depends on two things:

  • the existence of the mechanism
  • the confidence that grows from seeing it work

Once the system operates at a minimum viable level, the loop can begin to reinforce itself.

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Building repair infrastructure

Here are my working thoughts on United Repair Centre, one of the organisations I met at the Future Observatory event The New London Commons: Circular Hubs for Fashion and Construction.

This organisation does not just do repair.

They are building the infrastructure that makes repair possible — at scale — in the fashion industry.

A rich example of both an organisation aiming higher in the system, and the Living Systems Blueprint in action.

In my post earlier this week on steel reuse, I wrote about the emergence of a new ‘blue book’ on the operations shelf of the Systems Bookcase. This is about new operational systems: 

  • Recovery processes
  • Coordination between demolition and construction
  • Storage and logistics
  • New roles and responsibilities

None of this is visible in the final building — it is the hidden infrastructure that enables reuse to happen. 

It is very interesting to see how United Repair Centre is doing taking a similar approach in fashion. 

What’s particularly striking about their work is clearly it reflects the Living Systems Blueprint in action, building:

  • Interconnection
  • Symbiosis
  • Capacity to change

Interconnection

At a materials flow level, there is the connecting together of a waste stream with an input stream. 

But that means connecting many more stakeholders: 

  • Customers
  • Brands
  • Repairers
  • Logistics

And rather than disposable clothing from anywhere and thrown away to anywhere, their work reconnects people with the things they own and the people who repair them.

That is interconnection at many levels. 

Symbiosis

Turning a waste stream into a value stream is only the beginning.

From this, positive feedback loops can start to build.

Repair creates demand for skills.

Skills create livelihoods.

As repair becomes visible and valued, the perceived value of repaired goods increases.

Each part begins to reinforce the others.

This is a fascinating collective reversal of entropy — materials becoming more valuable over time through how we organise ourselves to work with them.

Capacity to change

By running a repair skills academy, they are not just building a pipeline — they are increasing the system’s ability to evolve.

Repair skills are adaptable and transferable.

And there is a learning loop between repairers and designers, enabling garments to be designed for repair from the outset.

This is not just a system that produces outputs.

It is a system that builds its own capacity to change.

There is an interesting difference from the steel case. In steel reuse, the enabling infrastructure remains largely invisible. Here, repair is made visible — badges, stitching, signs that say ‘repaired’.

Making repair visible shifts it from stigma to pride. And at that point, we are no longer just working on operations.

We are working on mindsets.