Berghaus x Material Matters


OFFICIAL THOUGHT LEADERSHIP PARTNER

Berghaus has been making equipment for the mountains since 1966 — and asking harder questions about it ever since. As Material Matters' Thought Leadership Partner, the brand brings six decades of material problem-solving to our stages, from the repair bench in Sunderland to the membrane science that changed outdoor clothing.


ABOUT THE PARTNERSHIP

Material Matters partners with brands that treat materials as a design question rather than a marketing one. Berghaus joins us for 2026 as Thought Leadership Partner, shaping the conversation across the London fair in September and Assemble, our conference, in November.

Across both, Berghaus will share how an outdoor brand extends product life in practice — what gets repaired and why, what a fifty-year-old membrane technology has learned about its own footprint, and where the innovation team is looking next.

REPAIRHAUS


Repair over replace — a free repair service, run in-house, for the life of the product.

Launched in its current form in 2022, Repairhaus is Berghaus’s free repair service, run by a small team at the brand’s home in Sunderland. The idea is pretty simple. Keep good kit going.

Any piece of Berghaus clothing, footwear or pack kit can be sent in, whatever its age or condition. And if it gets battered again? Send it back again. 

Broken zips get replaced. Tears get patched. Seams get stitched and re-taped. Sole units get re-bonded. Basically, if the Repairhaus team can fix it, they will. If something really is past it, the team will look at what comes next, whether that’s a like-for-like replacement under guarantee or giving old kit another life through upcycling.

Built to last — The longer good kit keeps going, the less need there is to make something new, helping reduce the resources used and the environmental impact that comes with replacing it.

FREE - All Berghaus kit. Any age. Any condition. As many times as it needs.

21 DAYS - Target turnaround in working days from the workshop receiving an item.


50 YEARS OF GORE-TEX


The membrane turns fifty in 2026. Berghaus has been working with it for forty-nine of those years.

The first consumer products made with Gore-Tex fabric appeared in 1976. A year later Berghaus adopted it - among the first users in Europe, and the beginning of a partnership that has run almost the entire life of the material. The 1986 Extrem range and its Trango Jacket set the template for what a technical British mountain shell could be.

Fifty years on, the question has changed. The industry's move away from PFAS has pushed Gore to an expanded polyethylene membrane, launched in 2022, and to PFAS-free water-repellent finishes. What a waterproof jacket is made of is now as much a design decision as how it performs.


MTNHAUS


Real people. Real problems. Better kit.  

MtnHaus is Berghaus’s innovation centre - a team of designers, engineers and scientists figuring out how outdoor gear can work better for the people actually wearing it. It starts with people, not products.
The team spends time finding out what isn’t working. What rubs. What restricts. What feels uncomfortable. What makes someone think twice about getting outside. Then they get to work.
Ideas are designed, tested, pulled apart and tested again, working directly with the people who’ll eventually wear the kit. Science plays its part. So does a lot of trial and error. The result is gear built around how real bodies actually move, feel and change.
No innovation for innovation’s sake. Just useful stuff that makes being outside a bit better.


WHERE TO MEET BERGHAUS

15–17 September 2026 - Material Matters London

Berghaus joins the Café Conversations talks programme across the three days of the fair, and displays a pop-up installation of its Repairhaus service. 


CONTACT BERGHAUS

Contact the innovation team at Berghaus

mtnhaus@berghaus.com

                 
FOLLOW BERGHAUS ON SOCIAL