A day at the Keswick repair bench
Ellie Rowe mends zips, seams, buckles and tent poles at our Keswick shop, and we spent a Saturday in August at her bench to see what came in.
At quarter past eight on Saturday 8 August, three quarters of an hour before the Keswick shop opens, Ellie Rowe is already reading tickets. The repair bench sits at the back of the shop, under a window, with a heavy sewing machine, a seam-taping machine, a heat press and a wall of shallow drawers. Each job on the rack has a pale repair ticket with the swift in the top corner and the ready date on a yellow band, so she can see at a glance what is due.
Ellie has been a repair technician here since 2022. Before that she worked on the shop floor, and she trained for six weeks at an established bench before she started, as every new technician does. She shares the bench with one other technician, and in August they need both of them.
The drawers
The drawers are the first thing customers notice. Half of them hold fabric: offcuts of each season's Hale and Swift fabrics, sent by our suppliers so that a patch matches the colour of the jacket it goes on. The rest hold zips, sliders, buckles, pole sections and shock cord.
"New Hale jackets and packs use a short list of zips and buckles, and every bench has the lot," Ellie says. "So most days I'm not waiting for parts." We keep spare parts for at least seven years after a line ends, which covers most of what comes in.
Nine o'clock: a snapped pole
The first people through the door have come in from a campsite in Borrowdale. A gust caught their Swift tent in the night and cracked a pole section. They are Club members, so the repair is free. Ellie slides the broken section off the shock cord, fits a new one from the drawer, checks the tension and hands the poles back. It takes about 20 minutes, and they are back at the campsite before lunch.
Mid-morning: zips and buckles
A Hale jacket comes in with a main zip that has finally given up after eight winters. Under our lifetime repair promise, a Hale waterproof is repaired free for as long as you own it, whoever you are. This one predates the newer design, where the zip comes out without unpicking the seam tape, so Ellie will unpick it, fit the new zip and re-tape the seam behind it. She books it in for Wednesday.
Then a pack with a hip belt buckle crushed in a car door. Hale packs have clip-on buckles, so the new one goes on at the counter in about two minutes. "That's my favourite kind of job," she says. "They don't even take their coat off."
Midday: the jobs that go away
Not everything is mended at the bench. A pair of leather boots from another brand needs a new sole, so they go in a box for the specialist workshop in Northamptonshire that resoles boots for us. They aren't own-brand, so Ellie tells the owner the price before anything happens: £75 a pair for a new outsole, which is on our repairs page.
Parcels go the other way too. Some of our smaller shops in Cumbria have no bench of their own, so they send their repairs to Keswick, and Ellie works through them in the quieter hours.
Afternoon: seams and a wash
After lunch she re-tapes a seam across the shoulders of a jacket that let water in where a pack strap had rubbed it for years. She peels off the old tape, cleans the seam and runs it through the taping machine, which lays new tape with hot air and pressure. Then she sprays the seam with water to check it.
Two jackets go in the machine for a wash and a PFAS-free reproof, the service our benches offer for any waterproof that has stopped beading. While they dry, she writes up the day's repairs.
Every repair goes on a log with the cause, and the product team at Hale House reads a summary each month before reordering. In July Ellie noted the same worn zip pull on several pairs of Hale overtrousers, and the note went into that month's report.
Six o'clock
By the time the shop closes she has booked in 23 jobs and handed back 15. The rack is full, and the ready dates on the tickets run to the following Friday.
"I'd rather see a small tear in May than a big one in October," she says, turning off the press. "Bring it in early and it's a ten-minute job."
Any of our shops will take a repair in, and you can also book one in the app. Hale waterproofs and packs are repaired free for everyone, and Club members get free repairs on all their Hale and Swift kit.
