On 16 June, nearly 200 people gathered at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, while a further 150 joined online, for a conference exploring one of the most pressing questions in sustainable design today: how do we build a culture—and a business—around repair and care? This is the story about Care and Repair Day in Stockholm.
This is the story of why that conversation needed to happen, how it came together, and what we learned along the way.
My own journey began in the autumn of 2025. What started as a professional curiosity about sustainability gradually evolved into something far more fundamental: a realisation that the way we talk about sustainability no longer reflects the challenges we face.
For years, I have spent much of my time on stages, in boardrooms and at conferences discussing sustainability, values and human behaviour. Yet I increasingly felt that the conversation had become predictable. We repeated familiar messages about the importance of sustainability and focused heavily on materials, emissions and production processes. These issues remain important, of course, but I began to wonder whether we were overlooking a larger story.
To test that hypothesis, I reached out to one hundred people across Sweden’s design ecosystem. Designers, manufacturers, educators, journalists, communications professionals, organisations and industry leaders all received the same question:
What are the most important questions in design and sustainability today?
I also asked them to look slightly ahead—to consider not only what matters now, but what they believed would matter most three years from today.
The results surprised me.
The conversation was not primarily about materials. Nor was it centred on chemicals, reporting frameworks or Digital Product Passports. Instead, a remarkably consistent theme emerged: longevity and durability. The ability to make products last longer. The systems required to repair them. The practices needed to care for them.
In other words, sustainability was increasingly being understood not as a question of what we make things from, but how long we keep them in use.
At roughly the same time, I began following the European Union’s work on new Right to Repair legislation. The more I explored the subject, the more questions emerged.
What exactly should be repairable? How do warranties interact with repair rights? Who should repair? What should it cost? What happens when a product is purchased in one country and used in another? If I buy a piece of furniture from IKEA in Sweden and later move to Spain, should the same repair rights apply?
The deeper I looked, the clearer it became that repair is not merely a technical issue. It is a cultural, legal and commercial question that touches everything from consumer expectations to business models.
It also became obvious that this was not a conversation that could happen in isolation.
I wanted to bring together the people actively shaping this emerging field—to move beyond theory and explore what repair and care look like in practice. Fortunately, I knew exactly who to call.
One of my first conversations was with the team at Act of Caring, a company whose name perfectly captures the spirit of the challenge. They had already been working extensively with questions of maintenance, care and product longevity, and immediately saw the importance of creating a broader dialogue.
Together, we spent much of the spring researching the rapidly evolving landscape of repair and care. We spoke with brands, explored emerging business models and searched for organisations willing to share both their successes and their struggles.
Our ambition was simple: to understand what the industry could learn from itself.
What does a viable repair economy look like? How do companies create value through care rather than replacement? And perhaps most importantly, how do we design business models that reward longevity rather than consumption?
So, me and the team at Act of Caring have worked all spring around this.
Me and Camilla Strange acted hosts of the whole conference.
Very early on we realised we need to divide the conference in three segments since these three areas have their own perspectives.
First out – fashion. This design segment is already experimenting with repair. Levi’s is letting boomers mend together with Gen Z (because the younger generation don’t know how to). And you have strong players in street wear, luxury and fast fashion doing things in this area.
Jodi Everding
This section was moderated by sustainability and fashion expert Jodi Everding. In the panel you had interesting people like:
Daniel Schmitt from Veja who is leading the way to sell repair with new shoes via cobbler stores.
Josephine Philips from Sojo. They are both doing digital solutions but can also help retail like Selfridge’s to do more repair.
Wioletta Staaf from Uniqlo. She is representing the large scale fast fashion approaching this question.
Louise Green from the fashion brand Toast. I just love how they reinvent themselves when it comes to fashion approach to repair.
Anna-Karin Sundelius from Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (Naturskyddsföreningen).
Second out – home electronics. This section is including everything from smartphones to washing machines. And they are the first ones effected by the new EU directive. Should we repair ourselves or should someone professional do it? And with only days until July 31 when the new directive is starting – are they ready?
In this section I acted moderator. And we got a 15 minute keynote session from Ingrid Björklund and Mikael Bird from Electrolux.
Oscar Nöjd from Samsung talked from a smartphone perspective and mentioned that perhaps it’s not repair we need but software updates.
Pernilla Enebrink represented the whole home electronics industry in the organisation Consumer Electronics Sweden
Daniel Laving represented the retail perspective being a the brand Clas Ohlson that sells both Electrolux and Samsung.
Third and final session was about interior design. It is of course difficult to compare a producer that is doing something for the contract market and compare that to someone who does it for endusers. In this panel we also managed to get a voice from the schools. What are they teaching future designers at school?
Speakers were:
Anna Ryott from the E&Y, a multinational professional services firm that advises organisations on topics ranging from business strategy and regulation to sustainability and corporate transformation.
Björn Fjellstad from Norwegian sustainability brand Vestre.
Mia Mögelgaard, now Fredericia, but has worked with all kinds of international Danish brands for sustainability
Ernesto Garcia, phd student at Konstfack, researching about repair.
Mirkku Kullberg, today CEO at Kasthall and boardmember at investment company NOD, but once the founder of Arteks line on used pieces called 2nd Cycle.
After the conference we had an intense networking session to catch up with everyone. Wine and fun.
A final note. It was a fruitful day. Hopefully the first of many. Three distinctive areas. Perhaps we left with more questions than answers? But regardless – this is the way forward. Buy better and make it last.
You can still watch the seminar. Go to Care and Repair Day. If you don’t want to watch the whole session, you can get the executive summary with the text version of the day.