Slovenia’s umbrella doctor weathers the economic storm while o ering users eco-friendly alternative
While most people believe a malfunctioning umbrella means you have to buy a new one, Slovenian Marija Lah — one of Europe’s last umbrella repairers — has spent her life proving them wrong.
“Everything can be repaired! I believe I can repair 98% of all the umbrellas I get,” the 56-year-old laughs, waving around a 50-year-old model to demonstrate its quality.
While most umbrella repairers have closed shop as millions of broken, cheap umbrellas are tossed out each year around the world, Ms. Lah is catering to a growing base of new customers who try to throw away less due to environmental concerns.
“It is a fashionable thing now,” she said in her shop packed with umbrellas, an old sewing machine and thousands of dierent spare parts piled on shelves.
Founded almost 60 years ago by Ms. Lah’s father, the tiny shop in a stonepaved Ljubljana street is one of the oldest in Slovenia.
Ms. Lah, who used to work as a kindergarten teacher, never thought of working there until her father — then struggling with an advanced cataract condition — asked her join as an apprentice.
Reluctantly, she agreed, to save the shop, working alongside him from 1991 for 14 years. And after his death, customers encouraged her to keep going.
‘Rare knowledge’
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“I told myself: ‘Marija, you cannot just throw away a knowledge that nobody else has in Ljubljana!’” she recalls. Ms. Lah explains that to make or repair an umbrella you need to master the craft of sewing and ne mechanics.
Some umbrellas take just minutes to repair, sewing the rib to the canopy for example; others, with complex mechanisms or plastic parts, can take weeks to disassemble and put back together.
Mass production of umbrellas by thousands of different factories — and with customers constantly demanding new models — also makes repairs di¬cult.
“You have to learn constantly,” Ms. Lah said.
She is unsure whether her children want to take over the shop one day, saying it was up to them as she does “not intend to force them”. Ms. Lah believes besides satised customers, rain is her “best advertisement” though she does not fear dry summers, which gives her time to clean up her shop.
Refusing to reveal business gures, Ms. Lah insists she can make a living as customers from all over Slovenia bring their and often their friends’ umbrellas for repair.