 Melita Braun,Manager of JAKO-O Textile Quality Assurance |
An Interview with Melita Braun, Manager of JAKO-O Textile Quality Assurance Fit, durable, and fashionable: parents who buy clothes for their offspring from JAKO-O have it easy. The only hard part for them is choosing. The „JAKO-O’s“ have already taken care of everything else. Each clothing item is tested intensively. This way, JAKO-O can guarantee that from T-shirts to rubber boots, there is no risk from harmful substances. |
Like all serious companies, JAKO-O strives to achieve the highest levels of product safety, including in their fashion collection. What steps are undertaken to this?
Melita Braun: „We already dedicate resources above and beyond what is customary so that we can offer our customers a level of quality of which we are also 100% convinced. This is often a difficult balancing act, because the price must also be affordable – despite expensive harmful substance tests and thorough fit testing.
Since clothing items are received from all around the world, we scrutinize everything we receive meticulously to ensure that the exacting quality specifications we agreed on with the suppliers are met, and we double-check adherence to statutory and societal standards.“
Where exactly „around the world“ is JAKO-O clothing produced?
Melita Braun: „Everywhere the „specialists“ are for the specific type of article: for example, most outerwear is produced in other European countries – primarily in Eastern Europe or Turkey. Performance wear, on the other hand, comes mostly from the Far East. We visit to the manufacturers to gain insight into their production. Child labour is of course taboo for us. But in other respects as well, we pay attention overall to humane working conditions!*
Especially important are JAKO-O skin-friendly materials without harmful substances. How is this ensured?
Melita Braun: „Our outerwear and underwear/home textiles are made predominantly of cotton or cotton blends. For almost every article of clothing in the JAKO-O collection, we have an Oeko-Tex Certificate on the merchandise or the finished product.“
What is behind the Öko-Tex Label?
Melita Braun: „Oeko Tex is a worldwide standard testing and certification system for textiles that pose no risk to health. The independent institutes of the Öko-Tex Association test adherence to the thresholds for prohibited or controlled substances. Even buttons and zippers are checked ! Only if all „ingredients“ meet the required criteria will the product receive the Öko-Tex certification for 1 year. New tests are performed after that. In addition, the institutes check for colourfastness and skin-friendly pH values. The rule is: the greater the skin contact and the younger the person wearing the article, the more stringent are the thresholds. What is special about JAK-O is that very many articles - even outerwear for children - meet the criteria of Product Class 1, which are the highest ÖkoTex requirements for baby products; this can be identified on the green „Class 1“ Stripe on the Öko-Tex label in the Catalogue.“
Already in the last spring catalogue in the fashion section, there was another label besides Oeko-Tex: „bluesign®“. What does that signify?
Melita Braun: „Textiles with the bluesign® logo guarantee that throughout the entire manufacturing chain only components and processes are used that pose no risks to health AND that offer maximum environmental protection. Instead of only testing the end product, as the Oeko Tex standard does, the components and processes that meet the specified criteria are defined before production in the bluesign® certification process. This ensures an efficient and maximum implementation, resp. Resource productivity and environment, health, and safety. The use of hazardous substances is excluded already BEFORE start of production. In the JAKO-O product line, above all most of the Polartec fleece articles meet this standard. Out goal is to certify the entire performance and outdoor collection according to the bluesign® standard.“
People are very concerned about harmful substances in clothing, but no one seems to think about it when it comes to shoes. But „healthy shoes“ shouldn’t just fit, they also should not expose children to risk from harmful substances. What does JAKO-O do in this regard?
Melita Braun: „After a shoe has gone through quality testing at JAKO-O, there’s not much left of it. It is cut up, squeezed, measured, and subjected to a great deal of stresses from the harmful substances testing. But afterward our customers can be completely certain that this shoe is comfortable, long-lasting, and guaranteed harmless. And that is exactly what we want at JAKO-O: for our customers to feel safe when they buy our products.
Stringent testing is very important for shoes, because they are made of many components and diverse materials. Here we perform more testing than is required by law. In cooperation with TÜV Rheinland we have developed an expanded testing program that includes testing for additional substances - for example, for tin-organic compounds, copper, lead, or phthalates, which are used as softeners in plastics and are suspected to have hormone-disruptive, carcinogenic, and fertility-impairing effects. Even the confidence we have in manufacturers to have everything tested adequately, is not enough for us. We perform stringent testing on additional samples taken from individual deliveries. This is always done, for example, with new colours.“
All of these tests are complicated and expensive - with shoes, for example, roughly 2 € of the sales price are pure testing costs..:
Melita Braun: „That’s true, but children’s health is of utmost importance to us and we don’t want to cut any corners, even in the future, in that regard! JAKO-O customers should always be able to rely on the fact that we check our children’s products out from head to toe. We gladly take on this responsibility so parents have one less thing to worry about.“
Ms. Braun, thank you very much for speaking with us!
