In a sun-drenched room, Alexia Agostinho, 35, concentrates on a Constance bag. Like her, some 170 craftsmen work in this workshop in Normandy, the 21st factory inaugurated by the luxury group Hermès to meet ever-increasing global demand.
“It’s very satisfying to manufacture a product from A to Z”, explains to AFP this former microbiology controller in a pharmaceutical group.
In operation since January, the leather goods factory in Louviers (Eure), a brick, wood and glass building, spread over 6,200 m2 and designed by the architect Lina Ghotmeh, should eventually accommodate 260 craftsmen.
Hermès has the particularity of recruiting without criteria of age, gender or experience. Many employees thus have a previous professional life.
“We are proud”, adds Alexia Agostinho, Norman who started at Hermès in 2021 in the other leather goods of the group in the region, in Val-de-Rueil, and who “does not see herself doing anything else”.
Saddlery and leather goods, the company’s core business, represented 43% of Hermès’ sales in 2022, which reached 11.6 billion euros.
“Growth year following year is around 7% in volume,” Guillaume de Seynes, managing director of the upstream division and group holdings, told AFP.
“We are on this very strong dynamic and we remain on a model of artisanal production. To generate growth, we must train and increase the number of our craftsmen”, he adds.
“Despite the increase in our capacities – we now have 4,700 craftsmen for leather goods – the demand seems always stronger”, he admits.
“For leather, we cannot create more than 250, 300 new jobs per year because it requires a lot of training,” said Axel Dumas, group manager during the presentation of the annual results.
It takes an artisan 15 hours on average to make a Hermès bag. “There is always a pair of bags that arrive during the day (in stores) so that everyone has the opportunity to have a bag,” said Axel Dumas during the presentation of the results.
It is therefore often a question of “being lucky” to find the bag of your choice in a Hermès store.
– Hermès’ oldest profession –
The particularity of Louviers leather goods is that it incorporates the manufacture of saddles which until now was reserved for the group’s headquarters, rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, in Paris.
If the group only sells “a few hundred a year”, sales of saddles, its oldest business, are also expanding, the United States being the first market.
Marie Lefeuvre, 34, a former driving school instructor, works on one of these saddles. “I wanted a serene, dynamic job and work with my hands”, explains this rider, “a palpable job”.
“These are objects that are transmitted, that can be repaired,” she adds with a smile on her lips. Hermès saddles are made in “double tailor-made”, that is to say tailor-made for the horse and for the rider. The first prize is 7,300 euros.
“We have a real growth in our saddle sales”, confirms to AFP Guillaume de Seynes without giving any quantified details.
“We launched a number of new models, made partnerships with riders, we gave more visibility”, he adds, “we didn’t want it to be just a conservatory of Hermès’ oldest profession. “.
Since 2010, Hermès has opened ten leather goods shops in France, bringing the number of saddler-leather craftsmen within the group to 4,700. Four other manufacturing projects are underway, in Tournes-Cliron (Ardennes), Riom (Puy de Dôme), L’Isle-d’Espagnac (Charente) and Loupes (Gironde).
