Weich Textil GmbH had launched a test balloon with a pop-up store, now the Mainz start-up, which specializes in alpaca wool, has landed permanently in a passage behind Frankfurter Freßgass', in a narrow sales room over two floors where previously the Jewelery label Thomas Sabo was a tenant.
So far, the cozy pillows, plaids, scarves and hats have mainly been sold online.
The entry of Christina Rosenbauer (formerly Hermès Germany) as an investor now enables the Mainz-based company to take bigger steps.
The store clearly has the haptic advantage.
The customer cannot help but touch cushions (from 245 euros), plaids and throws (from 350 euros) immediately.
They are available in beautiful natural tones, plain-colored woven fabrics and checked.
Hot water bottles with fur covers and slippers that look as if you would never get cold feet in them are available for 165 and 185 euros.
Customers have to dig deeper into their pockets for the “Fur-Lounger”, a beanbag with a cover made of at least six delicate alpaca skins: for just under 4,000 euros, it is an absolute eye-catcher.
Throws for several thousand euros
He has actually already sold the model several times, says owner Jannik Weich, who discovered his love for alpacas during a school exchange with Peru. After graduating, he turned it into a business model with a partner. This means that tailor-made bed throws for more than 7,000 euros will find their fans in Frankfurt and the surrounding area, without the freezing cold already prevailing. The season of cozy accessories is only just beginning.
Alpacas, a domesticated species of camel, have warm, silky, and fluffy fur. There are only around four million animals worldwide, 3.5 million of which live in Peru alone. They are bred there because of their wool, which is shorn, processed or sold once a year. Jannik Weich names the advantages: The hollow fibers are warm in the cold, cool in the warm, are also compatible with sheep's wool allergy sufferers and are in no way inferior to the highest quality cashmere. In addition, alpaca wool scores better than its cashmere competition in terms of animal welfare and sustainability. According to the label, the breeding animals live freely in herds, are only sheared once a year, and whole skins are only sold from animals that die naturally.
Cashmere wool has been criticized by environmentalists.
Due to the boom in the textile industry - several brands have recently opened their own stores in Frankfurt - and the excessive keeping of animals, the habitat of the goats is becoming increasingly scarce, whole areas of the northern Chinese and Mongolian plateaus are stepped up because the goats eat the grass with the Pull roots out of the ground.
Alpacas, on the other hand, only eat above the sward.
The shape of their toes does not harm the ground like that of the cashmere goats, according to the lasting message from Mainz,
Soft Couture Alpaca, Grosse Bockenheimer Strasse 6, Frankfurt; Monday to Friday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday until 6 p.m. www. Weich-alpaca.com