Do Repair Cafés compete with professional repair specialists?

Repair Café International Foundation sometimes gets asked whether access to free repair get-togethers is competing with professional repair specialists. The answer is; quite the opposite. Repair Cafés focus attention on the possibility of getting things repaired. Visitors are frequently advised to go to the few professionals still around. For instance we repair clothing, but do not generally make alteration. If we decide not to make an alteration, we recommend local seamstresses such as ‘Alterations with Alona’ who can be contacted through Stichery Do on DEnmark Stree in Wokingham.

Furthermore, people who visit Repair Cafés are not usually customers of repair specialists. They say that they normally throw broken items away because they find a professional repair too expensive. At the Repair Café they learn that you don’t have to throw things away; there are alternatives.