Over the last 9 months we have been piloting our Repairmongery programme in Leith supported by Leith Chooses. This programme offered repair services for broken household items, plus was a great research opportunity to see if this service would be something we could sustain long term as we asked everyone who visited what they would be willing to pay.
At ETL we believe that products should last longer and so when broken, they should be repaired. And thus the Repairmongery was born!
In total we had 7 open days in the last 9 months where people living and working in Leith could drop off their broken items. We received 88 items (of which 8 items were not broken in the first place !!) but from the 80 broken items our repair technician was able to repair a whopping 73% 
As for how much people were willing to pay for a repair, an interesting thing we learned was that this was more heavily influenced by the financial or sentimental value of the item rather than by the amount of work needed to repair it. Overall, it seems people were eager to have items repaired rather than having to dispose of them and buy replacements.
Whilst our Leith Repairmongery has come to an end, the Repairmongery in Portobello and Craigmillar supported by Action Porty is still running for one last intake day on Friday 25th April this week.
We’ll be sending out a feedback form to collect your feedback in the coming month and help us reflect on these two pilots.
