Development from Upper Austria

This fashion is easy on the nose and the washing machine

Christian Rieger also lives the slow fashion concept: "We keep a piece in the collection for between one and ten years."(Bild: SCROC GmbH Markus Wenzel Krone KREATIV,)

During the pandemic, customers also stood outside the store for an hour before they could enter. Since then, the demand for his fashion brand's products has continued to grow, reports Christian Rieger from Wolfern (Upper Austria), who quit his job as an airline pilot to switch to the textile industry.

Christian Rieger can still clearly remember the first few weeks of 2017, when he quit his job as an airline pilot and put everything on the SCROC card. "I thought to myself: 'What could possibly happen?'" says the now 40-year-old, who had already been working on his fashion brand part-time for four years at the time and had put a lot of time into making sportswear based on merino wool.

We had to persuade a lot of people to hang their clothes up to air after wearing them instead of washing them.

Christian Rieger, SCROC-Gründer

The first product was a T-shirt with a print run of 300. "The idea was to make a shirt that I could wear for a week without having to wash it, because airing it is enough - and yet there is no smell of sweat," says Rieger.

"Access for herd members only" is written on the door leading to the warehouse at the company's site in Wolfernn.(Bild: Markus Wenzel Krone KREATIV,)

Today, the range comprises 170 products - "from underpants to ski jackets", he explains, while he and his 15-strong team are working on expanding the Wolfern site: the store is too small, as is the warehouse.

Animal welfare in focus
He selected the farmers in Australia where the merino sheep live himself in order to ensure animal welfare. The processing of the wool hair, the knitting, the sewing - Rieger keeps an eye on every step. A production plant in Lithuania is fully utilized by SCROC. "We have grown from 24 to 55 employees there in recent years," says Rieger.

Target group expanded to include healthcare professions
Physiotherapists and doctors, who want to get close to others and play it safe when it comes to smell, have now also discovered fashion for themselves.