Merz b. Schwanen is a German clothing company known to produce on original loop-wheelers with organic materials in Germany.
History
Merz b. Schwanen was originally founded by Balthasar Merz as Balthasar Merz beim Schwanen in the Swabian Alps in 1911 and remained a family owned business until 2008.[1]
Globalization processes dominated the following decades of the 20th century, which caused a decline of the German textile industry because of companies that outsourced parts of their value chain to low-wage countries. Eventually Merz b. Schwanen could not keep up with those companies and was forced to close its gates in 2008 due to a lack of orders.[2]
Relaunch
After finding an original Balthasar Merz beim Schwanen Henley shirt at a flea market in Berlin, menswear designer Peter Plotnicki and his wife Gitta teamed up with one of the last remaining textile factories in Albstadt, a small town on the Swabian Jura.[3]