Veja opens a repair shop in Paris

French sustainable trainer brand Veja has opened its first standalone sneaker “repair temple” in Paris.

Known as the ‘General Store,’ the repair shop is located at 11 Rue de Marseille and offers cobbler and tailoring services to fix and extend the life of sneakers and clothing for any brand.

Designed to act as a hub of sustainability, the store has a workshop-come-showroom minimalist, wooden interior designed by a team of young French architects from Alors Studio featuring books, furniture, shoe care products, stationery, and other responsible brands and products. It is also outfitted with renewable energy supplied by France's only electric utility cooperative, Enercoop.

Veja's Paris repair shop builds on the brand's cobbler project to ‘clean, repair and collect’ launched in June 2020 to help sneakers last longer. This began in Darwin, Bordeaux with its first cobbler station, and extended to a concession at Paris's Galeries Lafayette in July 2021, since then it has repaired not only Veja trainers but also more than 3,500 pairs from different brands.

Veja has also added in-store repair services in its Berlin store in July 2022, a repair station in its Madrid stores, and a repair station inside a movable container in partnership with Log'ins, a reinsertion company, which fixes more than 1,000 pairs of sneakers a month to resell.