Common Threads is more than just an online storefront/collaboration between Ebay and Patagonia. It is an initiative that aims to boldly change the way we consume.

Participants do not just shop for second hand Patagonia clothes, they sign a pledge to really live the 4 Rs (Reduce, Repair, Reuse and Recycle). Participants pledge to “wrest the full life out of every Patagonia product by buying used when I can, and selling what I no longer wear to keep it in circulation”.

Common Threads has successfully provided a marketplace for Patagonia clothes for reuse, via individual sellers, in the US since 2011 and now it is launching now in the UK.

For the launch, Ebay and Patagonia are sponsoring an auction, with some celebrity items – including a jacket worn by adventurer Ben Fogle – and we’re really excited to have been chosen as the only recipient of funds raised. Take a look at the items for sale – and bid generously! The auction ends May 18.

R1 Jacket donated by presenter, writer, and adventurer Ben Fogle

Parka donated by Patagonia ambassador and alpinist Matt Helliker

Ready Mix Jacket & R1 Hoody donated by Patagonia ambassador and climber Zoe Hart

Nuevo Rancho Jacket donated by Patagonia’s VP of Environmental Affairs and author Rick Ridgeway

For us it is not just about funds raised. We feel Ebay plays an important role in creating an accessible marketplace for parts and enabling reuse. And we see Patagonia as a company that is shaking things up, and showing that there is a market for quality and longevity. Because by opening up this second hand market, and looking into extending the life of its products, Patagonia is reaching out to new customers. They are leading the way in showing that manufacturers and brands will only benefit from deepening engagement with their customers and appealing to them based on sustainable values.

When we imagine a better future, we imagine a company like Patagonia in the electronics industry. It is really worth reading about Patagonia’s values and imagining them in practice elsewhere.

We were also really flattered that Patagonia saw a match in us – they told us that they liked that we have started with grassroots action, but that we have a longer-term ambition to scale, and positively influence manufacturers and policy.

Ten months into our activity, we have stopped more than once to pinch ourselves. Last year, when we started throwing Restart Parties, we only had the smallest group of volunteers. We just threw ourselves head long into our cause – to empower people to reduce waste – and what has always impressed us is the organic growth of our committed group of repairers. New repairers turn up at events, find us online, get referred by friends.

We owe all of our momentum to our Restarters, a fun yet serious group. We would like to take a moment to introduce two of our committed repairers, and share their approach to repair.

John, a long-time Camden resident who is one of our most engaged volunteers writes:

“Common sense is very useful but not exactly what’s needed with some of the complex problems we meet. I’d call it ‘thinking outside the box’ or a Sherlock Holmes mentality, not that common…

I encourage people to treat repairing as a challenging game, where the prize is the working object plus the satisfaction of overcoming the obstacle. By default, win or lose, unconscious learning and experience is gained.”

David, an east Londoner who has a background in tech and telecommunications, and is a privacy and civil liberties activist, writes

The skills needed for most repairs are: a lot of common sense, some limited experience (acquired at a Restart Party), good research skills and access to a few tools. For example, if you can deal with a blown fuse, you have some understanding of continuity and if you have ever touched a lit light bulb, you understand that current generates heat. So when a device stops working, first steps are to check that everything is still connected, that electricity flows, and that there’s no dust or crumbs blocking any fan (an air duster often comes handy).

For how to open a device such as a laptop or a mobile phone, that’s where the research skills comes in handy as it is likely already documented somewhere on a web page or a video.

Experience will be useful to realise how hard to pull on a part to pry it open while being careful to avoid ripping out a hidden connector, or that using an egg carton to store screws in the order of each step helps to find them again when time comes to reassemble things.

Both believe in the empowering and transformative aspect of repair. John shares:

I like to ask Restart Party….customers? attendees?..participants?..what they find difficult in attempting repair themselves, will they try in future? We need to destroy the mystery of these magical gadgets everyone uses without any idea of how, why they work, or are made…..and the occult knowledge needed by the priests of repair. Maybe to see the insides of their beloved iPod would spoil the dream created by Apple, that this device just manifested into being, beyond the power of man…. alien technology or a higher force.

And David says:

For more than twenty years I’ve been communicating to demystify new technologies and software development, initially – and how to reclaim our civil liberties, later.

What attendees get out of the Restart Parties should be much more than a repaired product: a willingness to fix their electronic products in the future and some basic repair skills. The Restart Parties are an occasion for collaborative repairing, where there are no geniuses, just more experienced Restarters (and hopefully soon to be Restarters). It is for this transformative process, when attendees realise that many repairs are accessible to them, that I am involved in Restart.

The confidence gained at the Restart Parties by some attendees to start fixing things on their own is the most rewarding part of the experience.

If you are reading this, perhaps you have a skill worth sharing: maybe you know how to make a slow PC faster again. Or you know how to clean a printer, or how to extend the battery life of a smartphone. Perhaps you are a professional repairer or a tinkerer, and you can teach us more. If you’d like to get involved, please fill our this simple form or find us on Meetup.com.

Used on CC license from Flickr user celinecelines

This Friday, we will pitch our platform to the Urban Prototyping Hackathon at Imperial College. The themes of the UPLondon Festival really resonate with The Restart Project: sustainability, the city and entrepreneurship. The platform we are proposing is at the intersection of all three themes – our aim is to create a space for the urban crowd to generate its own bigdata about where to repair, which will feed a future economy of maintenance and repair.

Please read more about our concept, and if you are a have skills in the areas of coding, mapping, UX, gamification, and service design, why not come along and help us prototype something really game-changing? (And potentially help us win prize money!)

AFP produced this video piece on The Restart Project, including interviews with Ugo and Janet, and starring some of our favourite Restarters. Please let us know if you spot this on TV, we are not big TV watchers!

We had a fun, blustery day at Brixton Market – our first – on Easter Saturday. We have been keen to pop-up in a market, to promote repair “elsewhere”. Our idea is not to take business away from local repairers, but instead to encourage people to repair and reuse in a place where they are receptive to new ideas. So the Give and Take Day organised by Brixton Market was the perfect opportunity.

We were testing donated electronics to assess how broken they were and label them for people to take for free. Stuff that we deemed absolutely end of life and of little value for parts, we left for WEEE disposal.

We have more photos on Facebook.

We tested 30-40 items most of which were snapped up in short order. We learned in Brixton, there are lots of tinkerers who want broken kit for parts.

In future, we would love to have the time and calm to map people’s favourite repair shops, to demo some repairs to interest passers-by, and potentially even feature a local repair hero to promote his or her business.

(Speaking of which, we were happy to meet Steve, The Spin Doctor, one of Brixton’s proud appliance repair men. We’ll be featuring an interview with him soon.)

We’re just getting started with markets, as it warms up. We’ll be at Herne Hill Market on May 19th – please come by or contact us about it.

We are looking for a someone with spark to come work with us – you will be joining a lean (but not mean!) team of two. We need a volunteer fundraiser to help us for a minimum of three months, sending out applications for small grants, and to help us plan and pull off a crowdfunding campaign.

We cannot offer you money (except of course volunteer expenses), but we can offer a number of other things

• Serious work experience where your contribution will be significant – your work raising funds will help consolidate The Restart Project and help us scale
• Learning about number of important themes, relevant in London but also globally: employment, education, sustainability, growth, the “circular economy”
• Work with good-hearted geeks with critiques: Janet and Ugo
• A Thames view! We’ll be at a central location in Blackfriars
• Any personal electronics problems you have WILL be fixed, of course!

If you’d like a more formal job description, we’ve announced it over at Charity Job.

If you’d like to apply direct, send us a letter expressing your interest and a brief CV to: info AT therestartproject DOT org.

Deadline is April 22 – please don’t hesitate to contact us!

While we have trouble categorising ourselves – we called ourselves “Project” for a reason, we have a social project which we feel transcends structure – we have decided to become a charity. Specifically a Charitable Incorporated Organisation.

We found this structure best to ensure public accountability and participation in the work we do, as well for raising funds, seed money and finding sponsorships to allow us to scale-up our vision and increase our impact and visibility. Lest you get the wrong idea, we do not want to live off of grants. But some of our ideas for the promotion of repair will require initial funding before they can stand on their feet and generate sufficient revenues.

We’re happy that being a charity will immediately open the door to much-needed office space and to recruiting a volunteer (watch this space!). And we’re thrilled to introduce you to our very capable and inspiring Trustees.

And soon to come: more detail on individual charitable giving to The Restart Project.

We had our first, more formal training this week, at the invite of Brent Libraries. Our Restarters worked with 10 people who had signed up for our “Speed Up Your Laptop” training.

Many of the people – mostly women! – in attendance were owners of “hand-me-up” laptops from their children. None wanted to give up on their laptops, but really did feel they needed some basic maintenance skills. This format worked really well – 90 minutes of intense learning on how to take back control of an aging computer. One participant said “thank you very much for this session – I have learned that I really don’t need to go out and buy a new computer, I can just improve the one I have.”

For us, this just confirms that more formal learning opportunities can help us fulfill our mission – prevent waste and help people feel like empowered owners of their electronics.

We are developing a number of short, effective training modules – get in touch if you would like to host a training like this one in your community.

Our top 4 messages to future product designers…

1. Say NO to planned obsolescence – “kill chips” and other tricks are simply unethical and no longer acceptable, and designers must push back
2. Let us OPEN our products – what difference does 1-2 millimeters make if we cannot open up our own devices?
3. Make documentation accessible – or face an insurgent, service manual “wikileaks”, or crowdsourced, reverse-engineered manuals like from iFixit
4. Longevity through consistency of parts – spare parts markets are so outrageous because manufacturers are constantly changing parts that need not change

The most powerful thing about The Restart Project is that we do not just talk. The students who attended our lecture all came immediately after to our Restart Party and began repairing their laptops, iPods, phones, and various other gadgets.

Check out the photo album on our Facebook page.

Future product designers could experience first-hand all of the points we raised above – a powerful moment that we hopes empowers and shapes their work in future.

Thanks to Jane Penty of Central Saint Martins for hosting us, thanks to the enthusiasm of her students, and we hope to be able to return. If you work for a university, or are a student and would like to host us, please get in touch or comment below!