Janine Weiz-Bühler has served as the CEO of FREITAG since 2025, navigating the company following a decade of holacratic governance. Originally from Germany, she holds a degree in economics and brings extensive experience from the Austrian and Swiss textile industries, where she has successfully led both creative and commercial divisions. Her dedication to circularity and Cradle to Cradle product development earned her the Swiss Ethics Award and numerous other accolades.

Today, Janine provides strategic leadership for FREITAG, a pioneer in upcycling since 1993, with a focused mission to transform the brand into a leading circular design house through visionary leadership.

“Our philosophy is rooted in cyclical thinking and action. At FREITAG we don't just manufacture products, we recontextualize discarded materials by giving them a new purpose. Our journey, which began with upcycling truck tarpaulins, continues to inspire our commitment to resource efficiency. Our primary objective is to maximize the lifecycle of our materials and products with our services and advance toward a truly circular economy by closing our material loops with strategic investments like our Circ tarp project."

"At FREITAG, connection and collaboration are foundational to our design philosophy, as we believe meaningful impact is never created in isolation. Dialogue serves as the engine that drives our innovation, bridging creativity with execution. It turns complex sustainability challenges into tangible solutions, as seen in our "Circular tarp" project. Developing a fully recyclable truck tarp is the result of years of dialogue across disciplines. Designers, material scientists, manufacturers and sustainability experts worked together to rethink the entire lifecycle of the material. That collaborative process led to a scalable circular material solution that is now tested in a real fleet and will be transformed into our first product line in 2027. Ultimately, dialogue is synonymous with openness and a willingness to question established norms. By aligning purpose with action, we do more than improve industries, we redefine them. Whether through our products or our services like repair, swap, and rental, we also remain in continuous conversation with our community to prove that waste can be transformed into real value. From a leadership perspective, I view dialogue as a catalyst for cultural transformation, when teams feel heard and empowered, they experiment more boldly and take greater ownership." -- Janine Weiz-Bühler on Design in Dialogue: Connect + Transform

Portrait ©Joan Minder