Fellow Bavarians Hanwag, residing just a few miles up the road from BSTN’s hometown of Munich, have pioneered savvy outdoor footwear designed in Germany by blending tradition and innovation. As part of Hanwag’s launch at BSTN, we sat down with Christian Wittig from Hanwag – named after the brand’s founder Hans Wagner – for a neighborly chat about pioneer spirit in the Alps, streetwear kids in SoHo fiending for Hanwag boots, their limited “Rotpunkt” collection, true craftsmanship and more:
Hanwag celebrated its centennial in 2021. Which concepts from your founding days still hold true today?
Actually, nothing has changed at all [grins]. To get the full picture, you have to go back in history a little bit: Back when Hanwag was founded in 1921, Hanwag only had a workshop here in Vierkirchen, Bavaria. Then the word got around in the Munich mountaineering scene among all of these pioneers: “Hey, there’s a guy in Vierkirchen named Hans Wagner. He can cobble you shoes.” And then you drove out to Vierkirchen with a huge amount of money for those days, sat down with Hans, and he made you custom shoes in a few months’ time – and those shoes really fit your shoe last. I suppose an order like this was a gigantic investment at the time. That means the quality of this shoe had to be perfect. Otherwise people would have beaten him round the head with the shoes.
And you have to think about it: These were really shoes that were built for the mountains. You didn’t have a mountain rescue service or anything like that back then. That means that if you would’ve gotten lost on the Zugspitze or somewhere else, you didn’t have a cell phone and were flown out by helicopter ten minutes later. That means the function of these shoes, the quality, everything fitting one hundred percent, that had to be given. We still have these same values on our agenda today. The quality, the fit, of course, and the functionality as well. I mean, a shoe like this has to perform. So our values from back then really haven’t changed at all.
Can you tell us something about the limited “Rotpunkt” collection and how climbing legend Sepp Gschwendtner is connected to it?
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, these friction climbing shoes, as we know them today, did not exist yet. Back then, people really climbed with bulky mountain boots. And Sepp Gschwendtner was a pioneer in many things. He was one of those swashbucklers who were out and about in Munich at that time. And the special thing about Sepp is that he was a real tinkerer. He tried out many things. And he was looking for a company that wasn’t a large corporation, but real tinkerers as well. Which Hanwag was.
And with Sepp Wagner, our senior boss, and Adam Weger, our developer at the time, he formed an absolute dream team that tried to develop new products that perform superbly. So they set up this shoe as a trio. And then Sepp Gschwendtner actually climbed brand new routes with this shoe. Later on, the overall concept of the shoe was further developed: at some point, the first friction climbing shoes came along. But this “Rotpunkt” was a pioneering product, which was invented with Sepp Gschwendtner here in Vierkirchen.
“We didn’t want to look like classic mountaineers.”
Sepp Gschwendtner
Of course, there weren’t as many colorways around as we offer these days. But the shoes have been built exactly the same way as when they first came out. There is actually zero point zero new technology in it: We took out the old punching knives again for this production. It’s the same design, the same materials. Maybe with some tiny details, something has been changed minimally to make it better. And it’s been made over a new shoe last, of course. But this shoe has not been made any differently than it was made back then.
So you must have done some things right, back then?
Yes, we hope so [laughs].
But today, the “Rotpunkt” boot is more of a hiking and everyday shoe than for actually climbing walls, right?
Yes. Of course, it’s not a technical climbing shoe in today’s sense of the word. But you can definitely wear it for outdoor use. So it’s not like it’s a lifestyle product or anything like that. We would never do that at Hanwag. It’s really an absolutely performance-oriented outdoor product. You can go hiking with it, you can actually do everything with it.
Talking of: As mountaineering professionals, how funny is it to you when you spot someone wearing heavy mountain boots strolling through downtown?
On the one hand it’s somehow funny, but on the other hand, we’re delighted that the shoes are so well received and play a role in that world in terms of design. What we at Hanwag remember very vividly is our first Paris Fashion Week, when we had the Omega GTX model with us. That’s a completely crampon-safe mountain boot of ours that’s been around for years and has a completely iconic design. And in New York in SoHo, we displayed the pair in a store.
And both in the Paris store and the New York store, streetwear kids got their hands on the boot and were like “Damn, that’s a crazy design, I gotta have these” and so on. And it’s a fully crampon-proof mountain boot, you know? We sell those to mountain farmers and forest workers and mountaineers. I would never have thought of it to play a role in the streetwear universe. But somehow these kids almost couldn’t wait to wear those right away. And we really couldn’t wrap our heads around that [laughs].
Over 90% of your shoes can be resoled, which is already pretty sustainable: What other role does sustainability play at Hanwag?
That’s an interesting topic as a company that has been in the industry for over 100 years. We’re in a time right now where every label wears a green badge on its chest, puts in 3% shredded trash from the ocean in their product and boasts “we’re super green players.” So I think this term is used in an unhealthy inflationary way. And if you really think about what sustainability really means:
At the end of the day, it simply means creating a product that lasts a very, very long time. That can be repaired. That is produced locally: That means it’s not shipped halfway around the globe in a container before it gets to the store. And the materials have to be sourced locally and purchased at a fair price. The leather can never come from some tannery where child laborers are wading in a chrome puddle. And a product has to be built to last. I think that’s what makes a good product in the end.
And that’s where we come back to your very first question: what is it that got Hanwag started in the first place? People came to Hans Wagner and simply wanted a product that would perform uncompromisingly on the mountain. And it had to last a long time and have good quality. Because back then, it was incredibly expensive to buy mountain boots. So it was an investment for life. And if the sole was worn out at some point, the shoes had to be able to be resoled. And these are the simple basic values that have been with us for 100 years. That’s why I would say that sustainability plays a very big role for us.
