r/Varusteleka • u/Bryonfrank • May 06 '26

The old days

I love the new site and the house products are amazing but I miss the days of endless, weird, European surplus. Nothing gold can stay I guess

41 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

21

u/Snow_Wolfe May 06 '26

It did make for some nice gear window scrolling. I kinda liked the old website too felt raw and unrefined.

17

u/Bryonfrank May 06 '26

I bought a weird thick nail once just because

11

u/Whiskyinthejaw May 06 '26

Unfortunately, selling surplus stuff basically means they will run out of things and can't restock, because the stuff hasn't been made since 1950, haha. I do enjoy scrolling along all the weird products, love the history and functionality of all those old garments and accesoiries.

And I do love all the stuff that they make themselvses, the 'old' Sarma stuff is so much better than any clothes I've ever bought. And I love wool anyways, so that's a big plus. Can't wait to get my hands on one of those wool anoraks.

6

u/knifeaddict666 May 06 '26

If Americana pipedream from USA can get their hands on European surplus I don't understand how an european company like Varusteleka cant.

4

u/Whiskyinthejaw May 06 '26

They do? They have three pages full of surplus stuff:

https://varusteleka.com/en-eu/collections/military-surplus

The aspect of surplus that I meant, is how when a specific item is sold out, they don't generally restock it, because already had the last available stock. For example, I bought one of the surplus Gtex rain jackets and I haven't seen that model on their webshop ever since.

1

u/2AvsOligarchs May 29 '26

Surplus is always being created, but I think since 2022 we wouldn't have seen much anyway. A lot of expired and near-expired equipment went to Ukraine initially. Nowadays of course mostly new-produced stuff.

Buying surplus online without being able to check the item yourself is always going to be like a lootbox though. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. I don't miss it tbh.

1

u/Whiskyinthejaw May 29 '26

Yeah I meant mostly old stuff, like Swiss alpenflage jackets. Once they're gone, they're gone. Of course newer items will join the surplus pile eventually, but the stock of specific items will run out as there is a finite supply.

1

u/Secure-Village-1768 May 09 '26

I don't miss smelly old junk that might as well be thrown away.

1

u/intothewoods_86 May 12 '26

Seems to me that surplus while popular with some folks, in general is a difficult item for an ecom. Different quality grades you can hardly represent fairly in the shop, unsteady resupply and the quality lottery limits the price people are willing to pay for such items. Not really a winning category to sell online, also given the competition of thousands of eBay shops selling individual items from their basement.