The teeth of a zipper on my backpack came detached from the tape material on the side of the zipper and a friend said that it looks like I would have to get a new backpack.
Well... it turned out that the teeth of the zipper are just a plastic string wrapped around a cord (and both still perfectly fine) and that stitching the cord back onto the tape material required not much more than some dexterity and accuracy. It took maybe half an hour from diagnose to the finished fixed zipper.
Bonus: feels empowering to do things that someone else considered impossible.
I had a zipper go recently in a way where the whole zipper did need replaced. I was annoyed to learn that at least my local REIs don't do repairs any longer like they did in the past. I'd have sent it out for repair to a company that specializes in outdoor gear repair but a friend of mine was able to do it for me. (I don't have a sewing machine myself and this really needed one.)
FYI in the future there might be a "luggage repair" place in your area that could do this work for you. Had the same thing happen to a backpack I really like and paid $50 to get the zipper replaced and a couple seams reinforced instead of buying a new one.
Never thought of that and I've even had luggage repaired. As I said in another comment, a cobbler could probably have done it as well though I'd probably have had to order the zipper myself in that case.
I think with outdoor gear, there's actually a certain cachet to gear that's obviously well-used and battle-scarred :-)
Well... it turned out that the teeth of the zipper are just a plastic string wrapped around a cord (and both still perfectly fine) and that stitching the cord back onto the tape material required not much more than some dexterity and accuracy. It took maybe half an hour from diagnose to the finished fixed zipper.
Bonus: feels empowering to do things that someone else considered impossible.