Wero Swiss

In 1932 Jakob Wernli set up a wooden ribbon loom in a living room in Aarau and wove the first Wernli bandages on it. He was 48 and, like many people back then, had lost his job after the First World War. In 1941 he moved with all his looms into the old cotton mill in Rothrist, which had stood empty for a long time. Wernli AG is still based there today.

Color is what made the company known. In 1978 it showed colored bandages for the first time at a medical trade fair in Zurich, and today the Elasticolor bandage comes in eight colors from brown to lilac. Wernli also makes white and colored bandage clips, according to the company as the only manufacturer in Europe.

Until 2009 Bernhard Wernli ran the company as the third generation. Because no one in the family could take over, he sold it to Felix Schönle. Since 2010 the bandages have also carried their own name, Wero Swiss, with the aim of being “your competent manufacturer of bandages”.

Weaving is done on more than 100 looms that are set up by hand, and the yarn comes from Germany and Italy. Since 2021 most of the bandages have been made at the company's own plant in eastern Hungary. Headquarters and development remain in Rothrist, where hygiene masks have also come off the line since 2020. Wernli is explicitly committed to Europe as a production location, with short routes and supply chains under its own control.

You won't find a glossy sustainability brochure at Wernli, the company prefers to list what has been done. According to Wernli, energy consumption and CO2 emissions have fallen by 18 and 33 percent since the project began. Dozens of pallets of bandages went to Ukraine as aid, and the company supports Special Olympics.

For us, Wero Swiss is the brand for bandaging in everyday care. Fix and Lux keep wound dressings in place, Crepp Cohesive sticks to itself and needs no clip, and Solifix is the bandage for anyone who can't tolerate latex. For support and compression bandages there are the Ideal bandages as well as Lan and Forte, plus kinesio tape, arm slings and the Protect Type IIR masks. And when a child has been brave while being bandaged, it can be an Elasticolor in their favorite color.