MADE TO ENDURE
Savotta was founded in 1955 under the name of “Pylkönmäen nahkatyö”, Pylkönmäki being the village where we first started out and “nahkatyö” meaning “leatherwork”. Back then our founders Allan and Marjatta Halme focused on making gear for backcountry lumberjacks, leather mittens, backpacks etc. The lumber industry was a big part of reconstructing our country and economy after the second world war.
Since this sort of work was extremely hard on equipment, Allan said “Tehdään niin että kestää!”, meaning “Let’s make these to endure!”, which caught on as both a guideline and motto. This is where our “Made to endure” slogan comes from. These same basic principles guide our work still.
Although we make our gear strong enough to endure hard use over the years, “Made to endure” is much more than just that. For us making enduring gear means of course that it’s built to last a long time in hard use, but also overall staying power. Although we are constantly and surely evolving, and so is the gear we make, we don’t twist and turn with the trends too much. We focus on our own way of doing things and rely on proven design choices. When we make gear, we make it to endure not only hard use but also time itself, what we make today we intend to have purpose and use for years and decades to come.
Gear wears out in use, and things break, this is unavoidable. We do our best to ensure longevity through design and material choices, and also repairability and spare parts availability to keep our gear going through the years.
Some details we tend to pay special attention to is using strong enough materials when needed and reinforcing stress points with bartacks and double or triple stitching. And overall constructing our gear in a straightforward manner instead of doing lots of finnicky little details which can be possible failure points in long use.
When it comes to straightforward durability and longevity, here are some real-life examples: - Some tents we’ve made for the Finnish Defence Forces in the 1960’s are still used today. Worn, torn and repaired but still going strong. - Military load carrying gear, backpacks, combat load carrying kit etc. that we’ve made for the Finnish Defence Forces tends to be in service for decades, which means extremely hard use day in and day out. This couldn’t be accomplished with shoddy material choices and flimsy construction. - We get decades old backpacks in for repairs from time to time. These have been carried on countless hikes and usually require zipper replacements and such, and back they go. - We’ve heard praise from troops in Ukraine who found out they could pack our packs full of mortar ammunition and haul them around without seams and straps ripping, unlike some other packs they had which we’re constantly breaking apart.
Of course, design and material choices can’t be done with only durability in mind. Functionality must come first, as otherwise that durability won’t be worth anything. This does lead to our gear not being the most lightweight stuff out there, we know, but such is life. Neither is it the heaviest though, and we do our best to trim off excess weight when possible, using lighter materials where suitable and overall sensible design. Making enduring gear also has sourcing and environmental aspects. All our production is done in the EU, we run our own factories in Finland and Estonia, and all subcontractors we use are also located in the EU. With 97% of our materials being sourced from the EU, 2% from the US and 1% from Asia we strive to keep our supply chain as tight and short as possible, using only highly reputable and preferably as local as possible suppliers. All our operations are run according to ISO 14001: 2015 Environmental certification, and all materials we use are REACH compliant. Part of our business strategy is also keeping considerable material buffers in stock. This helps keep our production going through sudden changes, such as the COVID crisis and war in Ukraine, which both affected material availability suddenly and drastically. This requires considerable investments, but it is an important part of keeping our production going smoothly through hard times.
Thus “made to endure” indeed means a lot more than just tough gear, it encompasses our whole work ethic, operations, sustainability and continuity in everything we do.