REPAIRS - REAL LIFE SUSTAINABILITY
Buy wisely, buy once. This is a sustainability mantra and one which we wholeheartedly support. In choosing a Tusting bag, which can be repaired by the very craftspeople who created it for you, you acquire a bag that can take several decades of hard work through the combination of quality construction and the availability of our repair service. In short, our repair and refurbishment service is here to care for your bag for as long as you do.
If the years have caught up with your beloved Tusting travel bag, and it’s finally had one adventure too many, or the daily commute has left its mark on your briefcase, or perhaps your new puppy thought your handbag was a wonderful chew toy, we’ll take a look and see what can be done to help. Every Tusting bag is unique, which is why we take a completely individual approach to the leather repairs and refurbishments we carry out.
If you’d like us to take a look at your bag, please email us with your concerns, and include some photographs so we can see exactly what the problem is. Some repairs are a quick fix, while others may need us to take the bag apart. But whatever the issue, we’ll always do our best to help.
The process usually begins with an email from a concerned customer to report that their precious companion is getting rather worse for wear and asking if we can repair it.
Almost always, the answer is a simple ‘yes’. But every case is different and we need to have a closer look before we can say absolutely that it can be repaired, and how much we may need to charge for the work. So, we’ll generally ask for a set of photographs of the worn or damaged areas as well as of the whole bag and take it from there.
The typical areas of wear are the binding, handles, pocket insertions and the metal parts. On our satchel styles, the tabs sometimes get stretched when worked hard, and usually benefit from being replaced. The amazing strength of our leathers is often displayed in older bags, where the metal rings for the shoulder straps have often worn more than the (clearly much softer) leather.
We’ll always try to re-bind and do repairs with leathers that match how your bag looks now rather than how it looked when new, to achieve a good colour blend and therefore not change the character of the bag. Our aim is just to deliver back a younger, fitter version of the bag. Wouldn’t it be good if we could also offer this service to humans…
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Here’s a photo diary of a refurbishment on a venerable old Melchbourne briefcase, with each pair of shots showing the bag before and after restoration. This case, which was about ten years old at the time, came in having given daily service – the binding was beginning to wear through on the corners and the brass loops that take the shoulder strap had worn through and been lost. The front closure tabs were also looking rather worse for wear. On top of all this, although the bag itself was perfectly sound, it looked rather dry and scratched, so generally in need of a bit of TLC.
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Firstly we remove the binding and any other worn-out trimmings and replaced them with carefully-chosen pieces of leather to match, as closely as possible, the original bag. This alone has a remarkable effect on the bag as it removes at a stroke most of the tatty bits that make a worn bag look rather tired. The bottom corners in particular often show wear after brushing along all the floors, tables and chairs that a bag sees in its life.
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Then any brassware that needs to be replaced is changed (we have special versions for retro-fitting so that the bag doesn’t need to be totally taken apart).
Finally, the reassembled bag is given a good feed and polish – not so much that all the character so long-collected is erased (though this would be barely possible anyway) but just enough to make it feel and look a little younger, ready for another ten years or so of service.
If you have a older Tusting bag that might benefit from some sympathetic restoration, please do not hesitate to contact our customer care team via our contact us form for advice and a quote.