These manufacturers are not pulling the wool over your eyes

Austria’s knitwear and loden producers combine tradition with chic and innovative ideas for international success.

When people think of Austrian fashion, the first thing that comes to mind is traditional costumes and indeed, items like dirndls and lederhosen are part of Austria’s cultural identity that is held high by traditional brands such as Gössl, Habsburg, Mothwurf and Sportalm. Designer Lena Hoschek also gives traditional costumes a lot of room in her collections. She recently created Austria’s first official huntress jacket in cooperation with the Bavarian traditional costumes label Meindl and the Austrian Hunters Association. And the exclusive piece of clothing is made from Austrian loden, of course.

Fine fabric for many different clothes

In times past the production of loden, a highly robust wool fabric, was widespread in the Alpine region but today only a handful of producers remain. The oldest is Lodenwalker in Ramsau am Dachstein, which was first mentioned in a document in the year 1434. The fundamental production process, i.e. felting wool fabrics with water, heat and mechanical pressure, has hardly changed since then. Only, in the 19th century machines started to replace manual labour and in addition to domestic sheep more and more fine Merino wool is used these days. The fabric itself has changed, however: It is now soft and fine and no longer hard and itchy like it used to be. That means that loden is now used for much more than rustic loden coats.

The many uses of loden can be seen in Mandling, not even 20 kilometres from Ramsau, where Steiner1888 is located. The manufacturer was founded by members of the Steiner family, which has been operating Lodenwalker since the early 19th century.

The company offers a regional version of a typical loden jacket, called the Schladminger, but the range of products is now dominated by a timelessly chic urban style with sports jackets, blazer coats, capes, parkas, sheath dresses, skirts and cargo pants. “We wanted to combine international flair with tradition in our designs, resulting in a renewal of our brand through our products,” explains Johannes Steiner about the company’s strategy. He and his cousin Herbert are already the fifth generation of the Steiner family to run the business, and have come up with innovations in fabric production and workmanship. The latest innovation is a particularly light and elastic loden fabric, which was used for the first time in this year’s FS Collection. “The new collection from stretch loden has been very well received. We received a lot of positive feedback directly from our customers at the shops in Mandling and Schladming. We will continue using a lot of stretch loden as the material is very multifunctional,” Steiner says.

© Lupi Spuma

Hollywood stars such as Diane Kruger love Giesswein’s Merino Runner.

© Steiner 1888

Steiner1888 shows different loden styles in its collection.

But the fine loden fabrics from Mandling are not only used in the company’s own collections: “Bottega Veneta, Thome Browne, Prada and Yves Saint Laurent are also using our fabrics,” Steiner says proudly of the fact that renowned luxury brands from France and Italy are buying fine fabrics from the Austrian Alps.

In economic terms, interior design is a much more important field for Steiner than the b2b fashion sector. The company offers cover fabric, blankets, pillow cases and accessories. Demand went up during the Covid pandemic as people were focusing more on their homes due to lockdowns, working from home and distance learning; many invested into redecorating their home, making it cosier. In this area Steiner1888 has an excellent reputation, equipping offices, hotels, restaurants and cruise ships.

In the b2c sector Austria is the most important market though exports play an important role too. Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Norway make up 55 percent of exports and are thus the most important foreign markets that order loden products from Mandling. But Steiner1888 is gaining more fans in the United States and Japan.

Another positive effect from the Covid pandemic for Steiner1888 was the focus on e-commerce: “Last year we launched a new online store to offer customers an even better shopping experience. And that has paid off as the number of visitors went up two-fold. That way we were able to compensate the loss from physical retail in part through online sales.” Overall, the company’s turnover went down by 25 percent in 2020, compared to the previous year. But the situation is on the up again: The second quarter of 2021 saw a two-figure increase in turnover and the positive trend is continuing in the third quarter. A long-term prognosis is very difficult to make at the moment, Steiner says, but he is optimistic for the future. And he has reason to be: The increased interest in sustainably manufactured fabrics from natural fibres is great for loden.

Perfect for the sporty runway

The same also goes for broadcloth, which is very similar to loden, but is based on a knitted primary material instead of a woven one. The venerable Tyrolean manufacturer Giesswein used it to create the Merino Runner, resulting in a run on its products. There were two reasons for the move from slippers,

© Giesswein

which had become the company’s most important product group since the mid-1970s, to sporty streetwear from broadcloth. First of all, Giesswein wanted to expand its range of products with something you can sell all year round (cosy slippers are something for winter), and secondly the company wanted to reach younger customers. But specialist sports shoe producers showed no interest in woollen sneakers. So Giesswein decided to enter the unknown and presented its first outdoors shoe in early 2017 with the help of crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo – but of course also thanks to social media campaigns, classic PR and links on the online store. The idea was a complete success, also in terms of raising the company’s international profile. The market entry of new models in 2019 was even more successful. By now, Giesswein has sold more than 600,000 pairs of its Merino Runner and expanded its range of products with more sneakers, sports and trekking shoes, Chelsea boots and ballet flats. The range of materials has also become bigger, first with a light high-tech stretch shoe from Merino wool, which was developed in-house. In 2020 the Wood Sneaker followed, which has an upper material made from eucalyptus wood fibres. “We are doing a lot of research as to how we can make our production and our products more sustainable,” says Markus Giesswein, who represents the family’s third generation to run the company. But the company also comes up with other innovations. In August 2021, a sneaker from novel cactus leather saw the light of day – Giesswein’s first vegan product. In September another woollen running shoe followed, which has a cleverly constructed sole that recuperates a large amount of the ankle’s energy when getting off the ground and thus relieves the runner.

Demand did not suffer from the Covid pandemic but kept rising strongly. The lockdowns and working from home have also had a positive effect on the sales of slippers. And since the online shop became the company’s most important sales channel four years ago, closed shoe stores were not a big deal to Giesswein. “We are generating 80 percent of our turnover online,” says Managing Director Markus Giesswein. “We were able to fully make up for shut down stores with an increase in online turnover.” The finished goods warehouse was fitted with a new AutoStore plant in summer 2020. It has 31 robots and 17,500 containers across nine levels, which resulted in a higher capacity of 140 storage and 900 retrieval operations per hour. That is the perfect basis to quickly manage the growing number of orders; today, Giesswein is exporting to more than 100 countries in Europe, Asia, the United States and Australia.

Slippers as a fashionable trend piece

Despite the Covid pandemic, or maybe also because of the pandemic, business is going very well at Gottstein from Imst, which also specialises in shoes from wool.

Due to the comfortable streetwear trend, the company launched a sneaker from wool felt with great success in 2020. Gottstein’s focus, however, is certainly on seamless felt slippers that are available in a large number of colours and styles for men, women and children. The collections Species Protection and Rare Wool are something special that targets mainly customers that value luxury and sustainability. Species Protection uses natural, non-coloured wool from rare European sheep breeds such as Tyrolean Mountain Sheep and Stone Sheep, Coburg Fox Sheep, Swiss Jura Sheep and White Polled Heath. The Rare Wool collection is made from felt from fine exotic wool such as yak, camel and alpaca.

Gottstein has its customers in thirty countries and the export ratio amounts to more than 80 percent. “Our biggest markets are Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the United States,” says Managing Director Gerhard Gottstein. “But we see a lot of potential in the Nordic countries and Canada. We have been selling our products successfully online for more than ten years. Therefore, we could compensate for the losses from shut stores very well and attract new customers.” A fly in the ointment, however, is

© Eisbär © Eisbär

Protection from the elements or a fashionable cherry on top – the hats from Eisbär are both practical and aesthetical.

that the Covid pandemic made purchasing raw materials more difficult and the rising raw materials prices sometimes cause bottlenecks in the supply chain. But Gottstein has a few more ideas: The company is working on 3D-knitted slippers without any waste and new natural slipper models. He believes that the increasing demand will bring further fortunes. “Today’s customer has not only high standards in terms of quality but also when it comes to the production and the carbon footprint of a product. Regionality is gaining in significance. We believe in this trend and think it is important – and we are convinced that we will benefit from it with our philosophy,” Gottstein says.

Cool hats from fine wool

Sustainability is playing an increasingly important role at Eisbär, too. The family business from Feldkirchen an der Donau in Upper Austria is known for its chic hats and scarves, and has been the official outfitter of the Austrian Ski Team right from the start. The Covid pandemic put a halt to winter sports and that had an effect on Eisbär’s turnover in 2020, of course. But the loss has been made up in parts from strong growth in online retail, says CEO Ronald Mühlböck: “We tried to see an opportunity in the challenges of 2020, and in the second half of the year we developed and launched the completely new product line Pulse for Beanie and Tube, both multifunctional items. This collection consists of a multifunctional beanie and a multifunctional tube, a type of scarf. Sustainability is the word here, and sustainability along the entire value chain also comes first for all our fall/winter collections 2021.” The new Sports Style Line uses Merino wool from an eco-farm, just like Pulse, which is treated without chlorine and is coloured in a sustainable way, plus cashmere with a level of recycled material. The Rewool Collection, which includes both popular classics as well as completely new models, will use a composite material from Merino wool and synthetic fibre from recycled plastic bottles for the very first time. “The sporty streetwear looks and the trendy designs appeal to young, sports-loving customers with an ecological conscience. The feedback we had from retail on our latest innovations have been very positive and thanks to our production being located in Austria, we were able to react flexibly to a higher demand,” says Mühlböck. He is optimistic that good times lie ahead and sees growth potential both in Austria and abroad. Germany is the biggest export market but Mühlböck believes that Europe in general, the United States, Korea and China will gain in importance. In China, the growing winter sports market gives reason to be optimistic. ◆

© Eisbär