Hermès offers hope to southern town
29/11/2012
At the start of 2012, Hermès began a stitching operation in Montbron occupying some of the space and giving work to around 60 of the former employees that a lingerie manufacturer left behind when it closed down. The leathergoods firm has now announced that it will build a factory of its own in the area and take its total Montbron workforce to 240 craftsmen and women by 2015.
Commenting on the news, Montbron’s mayor, Gwenhael François, said that Hermès is turning the town’s fortunes around after two decades of difficulties. A number of specialist textile and lingerie factories have closed in Montbron since the start of this century, with 300 jobs lost in total.
“Now Hermès is poised to become the number-one source of employment here,” the mayor said, “keeping our artisan know-how alive.”
For his part, on setting up in the town at the start of this year, Hermès’s head of leathergoods (its most important division), Olivier Fournier, said: “There are a thousand good reasons for setting up a workshop down here, in the part of France that I come from. My roots are here and there is something about this region that I need. I love the sweetness of Charente. Things are made easy here. And it’s because I know this area so well that we’ve been able to make this project work.”
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