France: tannery leader turns Order of Merit ceremony into joint celebration
24/04/2014
The authorities announced last year that Ms Hiriart-Carriat was to receive the award, and she used the time between the announcement and the medal ceremony to turn it into a joint celebration at the tannery, asking Mr Batigne also to present long-service medals to 13 of her 65 employees.
“I wanted to wait and do things this way because we are a team,” she said afterwards. “I didn’t want to be singled out.” She added that being the youngest person in the French leather industry to run a tannery, and also the only woman, were probably factors in her receiving the Order of Merit distinction.
Marie Hiriart-Carriat said at the same time that her company had turned over around €17 million in 2013, which she pointed out was on a par with its results for the previous year. She said she was happy to have that stability in the context of raw material being “very expensive, and still going up”.
In addition, she said she and her team are “proud to be making a quality product”. When she took over the business from her father in 1992, the main market for Carriat leather was furniture upholstery, but the current managing director has changed that and now 60% of its finished leather goes into high-end leathergoods.
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