The Long View: On Making Things to Last

The opposite of sustainable is disposable. And the most unsustainable thing a company can do is make products that are designed to be replaced.

We have always taken the long view. A PABDER piece is not designed with a season in mind it is designed to be worn for years, ideally decades, and to improve with that wear. This is not a difficult design brief. It requires only a commitment to materials that age well and construction that holds.

What it does require is a willingness to charge appropriately for the work. A pair of shoes that costs three times as much as a fast-fashion equivalent and lasts ten times as long is not expensive, it is efficient. But this argument requires customers to think differently about the relationship between price and value, and that is not always easy to communicate.

We try to communicate it through the objects themselves. A piece of full-grain leather that has been worn for five years speaks more clearly than any marketing copy. This is why we encourage customers to bring their oldest PABDER pieces into our boutiques.. not for repair, necessarily, but simply to show us. The conversations that follow are the most useful market research we have ever done.

The long view is not just an environmental position. It is a design philosophy, a business model, and a relationship with our customers. We think it is also, simply, the right way to make things.