THE ORIGIN OF WARMPEACE’S PRODUCTS

Since 2001, Warmpeace products have not been made exclusively in the Czech Republic.
For a long time we resisted moving production to specialised factories in Asia, Eastern Europe or Africa saying that ‘our products are our backbone, and being able to personally guarantee their high quality is a matter of pride for us’. However, our view changed around the turn of the millennium as we faced the following production problems:

1) We were unable to handle the demand for our products, despite having an incredible 80 employees.

2) We had to start producing our winter products in March in order for them to be sent to retailers in time for the start of the season. That meant spending all spring and summer filling up our warehouses and investing in stock; our default mode was to ‘survive’ the winter peak. It wasn’t until then that the money invested in the winter equipment started to show some returns. Ironically, the ‘better’ our winter orders were, the worse we were doing, and convincing the bank to give us a loan was becoming a superhuman feat.

‘Well, if you were just buying and selling, a loan would not be a problem. Unfortunately, production cannot be monitored, the factors are too numerous and complex, and the returns are slow...We’re sorry, try somewhere else...’

How many times did I hear those words? Unbelievably, before each application I had to close my old account and open a new one, just to get the bank to speak to me at all.

3) Our specialised and technical equipment required investing in machines and technology that were paramount to production, yet would not ‘pay their way’ with our scale of production. In other words, we did not have large enough production volumes to cover the cost of buying a new machine, however important it was for production. On the other hand, not investing in this technology would mean lagging behind the market and therefore losing customers.

The result? We decided to move the production process abroad. Other than for a few experienced factories in China, our equipment is produced by specialists in the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland. Some of our labels also state Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Latvia or Hungary as the country of origin because we cooperated with producers in these countries in the past.

Lately, we have started producing certain items, in particular our down products, in multiple countries. In such cases, semi-manufactured goods from Asia are sent to Germany to be checked, filled with European down, and then finished.

Rest assured though, whatever the country of origin, all our products meet our same strict standards. Production is carried out according to our verified system that divides up the work to ensure it is carried out as well and efficiently as possible. This is standard procedure for us. This system initially intimidated us, but today we highly appreciate it.