Extend the life of your shoes – with Żabka and woshwosh!

Extend the life of your shoes – with Żabka and woshwosh!

Żabka regularly expands the portfolio of offered services, simplifying the lives of customers and thus freeing their time. Now it also thought about their shoes – already from June 5, they can be left in the chain stores for quick, professional repair or cleaning. This not only extends shoes’ life by up to a few seasons but also allows you to take care of the natural environment. The services are carried out together with woshwosh sp. z o.o., the first shoe circularity company in Europe, which cooperates with local shoemakers, reclaiming this declining craft.

Shoe cleaning or repair services can be ordered in Żabka, via the website https://woshwosh.zabka.pl/checkout/ or by going to the main page of Żabka under the “Convenient services” tab, i.e. https://www.zabka.pl/wygodne-uslugi. Customers can choose individual services or cleaning and repair packages at attractive prices. For example, replacing flecks or beakers costs PLN 35, and standard cleaning costs PLN 59. There are also cleaning and repair packages including impregnation or ozonization and packages dedicated to sports or elegant shoes. The lead time is up to 10 days for shoe cleaning services and up to 14 days for shoe packages and repairs. Shoes should be brought to the Żabka store chosen when ordering the service and picked up at the same place.

– Surprising our customers with other unique services and solutions is the specialty of Żabka. By introducing services in cooperation with woshwosh, we help customers save their time, but also money, because repairing and cleaning shoes is much cheaper than buying a new one. Together with our customers, we also take care of the environment, implementing our responsibility strategy and, among other things, implementing the zero waste principle – one pair of shoes breaks down on average within up to 50 years! That’s why we encourage customers to refresh their favorite shoes for the summer with woshwosh and Żabka store, which they have just around the corner – says Przemysław Tomaszewski, Sales and Service Development Director in Żabka Polska. 

– We are very interested in spreading the idea of zero waste and popularizing the cleaning and repair of shoes among Poles. Just as we put our clothes in the laundry room and not throw them away, we should do the same with our shoes. Extending their life is very important for our planet (cleaning and repairing shoes versus buying new ones is a saving of as much as 95% CO2). You can clean your shoes at home, but it’s very important how you do it, and that’s why we also do education because traditional putting something in a washing machine is definitely not eco-friendly. For those who want to entrust this task to professionals, there is woshwosh. I am glad that together with Żabka we will contribute to popularizing the idea of zero waste – says Martyna Zastawna, founder of woshwosh.

Shoe cleaning and repair – environmental action

Regular cleaning and repairs extend the life of shoes by up to several seasons. By choosing a shoe cleaning service in Żabka together with woshwosh, rather than washing them in the washing machine, you can reduce the carbon footprint by as much as 93 percent. For washing shoes in a washing machine, between 35 and 50 liters of water are used. Every time shoes are washed, microfibers are released, which then contribute to the pollution of the oceans and waters. Washing shoes in the washing machine also causes their destruction, gluing, cracking, and loss of color.

By choosing professional shoe cleaning instead of buying new shoes, you can reduce the carbon footprint by 85%. On average, 14 kg of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and as much as 50 liters of used water are produced per pair of shoes. One pair of shoes breaks down for an average of 50 years. Only less than 1% of shoes discarded are recycled.

woshwosh – a second life for more than half a million pairs of shoes

woshwosh is Europe’s first footwear circulator. It was born out of a passion for shoes and ecology and the need to implement the idea of zero waste. woshwosh services include professional cleaning and repair of footwear. The company also cares about education and second-hand shoe circulation, organizing collections for the needy and selling used shoes. Through cooperation with local shoemakers, woshwosh is reclaiming the dying shoemaker craft. The company has been operating in the market since 2015. It has given her second life to more than half a million pairs of shoes.

Shoemakers – a declining craft

Shoes are one of the oldest inventions of humanity. Originally, cave dwellers and people walking on uncomfortable ground invented the first shoes to make life easier and protect their feet from the cold. The shoes were already mentioned in documents from ancient Egypt, Greece, and China. Some of the oldest shoes found by archeologists date back to around 3300 BC. They were found in the Alps – a bear skin sole with a twine net, which was filled with straw if needed to provide warmth.

Since the Middle Ages, the crafts involved in making and repairing shoes have been one of the most popular and necessary. Soles used at that time wore out quickly, therefore the demand for shoe products was high and there was room for many shoemakers in society. In the mid-19th century, in the case of shoemaking as well as other professions, rapidly progressive mechanization began. Since then, the number of shoemakers has gradually decreased and now it is a rare profession because most of the shoes are produced in large factories. Few people have their shoes fixed – most throw them away and buy new ones.

More about shoe repair and cleaning services in Żabka: https://woshwosh.zabka.pl/checkout/