Initiatives and campaigns

The world can only improve if people really want to help shape its future. For a circular future, we need thinkers and researchers with vision. These free spirits, in turn, need space for new ideas and room for inspiration so that they can develop the appropriate tools to do so.

That's why, every year, we run our «LEARN MORE. PAY LESS» promotion for anyone who’s in education. For a limited period, they can benefit from price reductions on selected products.

We endeavor to encourage and inspire sensible and sustainable consumption. For example, with our statement against Black Friday, the day when consumption goes crazy, in which FREITAG has never participated with any discount promotions.

In 2019, it gave rise to the «Don't shop, just swap» initiative. Since then, our online store has remained closed every year on Black Friday. Apart from that, all website visitors have been redirected to our S.W.A.P. (Shopping Without Any Payment) bag exchange platform .

In 2022, 15 physical FREITAG stores from Zurich to Tokyo also participated for the first time and invited customers to «S.W.A.P. Friday». While store checkouts closed early on Black Friday, FREITAG bag owners were able to join a swap event and get a new bag without spending money or wasting resources.

At Milan Design Week 2023, a FREITAG installation entitled «Always Beta. Never Waste» gave visitors an insight into two future projects. The exhibition focused on the development of the circular Mono[PA6] Backpack and looked at the creation of the first circular truck tarp. A year later, we returned as guests at Milan Design Week, this time with the exhibition «Access over Ownership». It was the result of a joint effort with industrial design students at the ECAL in Lausanne. The students took up a point listed under the same name in the FREITAG manifesto and developed several values-oriented loan offers. The spectrum ranged from furniture and clothing to a rubber dinghy.

In 2023, to mark our 30th anniversary, we looked back on our beginnings and, as a tribute, copied the counterfeit that had helped to make the FREITAG bag an original. Because something that started in the fall of 1993 as the idea of two brothers in a shared apartment in Zurich has developed into a company that brings upcycled one-off bags to the streets, from Europe to Asia. Then, as now, we’ve been driven by the notion of keeping used materials in circulation for as long as possible and closing cycles.

In keeping with a point in our manifesto, «We prefer access over ownership», we ran the regularly repeating #gonewithfreitag bag loan scheme. During the summer months, bags could be borrowed free of charge from FREITAG stores and selected sales partners. To benefit from the scheme, borrowers had to be registered members of the F-ederation, post a souvenir picture with the #gonewithfreitag hashtag on Instagram and return the bag after three weeks of traveling at the latest. It was our way of showing that sharing and using consumer goods is a sensible alternative to buying and owning them.

In 2015, we selected two truck tarp designs from more than 1000 entries, which Planzer then implemented. After the two tarps had spent six years on the road, FREITAG turned them, in its own characteristic fashion, into unique one-offs and put them into an online draw.

For as long as FREITAG has been around, we've been backing bikes. In response to a local vote in Zurich regarding more bikeways, we erected a temporary monument on the flash-rusted FREITAG Flagship Tower to the most sensitive means of transport and to everyone who uses it.

Originating as a plea for more conscious, meaningful consumption, the FREITAG Manifesto is now the guideline by which we think, act and work together. In 2021, several internationally celebrated female artists graphically reinterpreted the points in our manifesto.

Together with artist Georg Lendorff, we invited everyone at Milano Design Week 2019 to confess their design and consumer sins as part of our UNFLUENCER exhibition. The plan was to initiate a new discussion about good and bad design in the 21st century.

At the (spatial) center of «UNFLUENCER - De-sinning the Designers» was Lendorff's immersive, walk-in video and light installation. During and after the event, visitors could confess to all their design and consumer sins, totally alone and anonymously or in a confidential dialogue.

For its 25th birthday, FREITAG wanted nothing less than to give everyone a happier world. To that end, we sought an Executive Vice Pleasident for Global Happiness for a one-year term. In Allan Dransfield and Tim Krohn, we have now entrusted not one but two happiness heroes with the task of raising the global serotonin level.

For Allan, happiness «is all about people, their relationships with each other, and shared moments.» Drawing on his travels, direct, serendipitous encounters and a series of social experiments, Allan went off in search of a universal code for happiness.

Meanwhile, Tim Krohn gave creative artists the space and peace of his home in St. Maria to help them create something worthwhile. Something that will travel around the world as a small, silent work, intending to remind people that each of us already has happiness within ourselves.

In the P.S. to the FREITAG Manifesto, we say: «Happiness is cyclical». In December 2021, in stark contrast to a traditional, sales-based holiday campaign, 26 FREITAG employees gave away their personal bags to the community.

And because happiness only multiplies in cycles, anyone who wished could apply for one of the bags online by telling us how they would pass on the happiness to others. The F-Crew based its selection of the most suitable new bag owners on these promises of happiness.