Hermès expands its network of workshops. “This is our twenty-third leather goods store in France”welcomed Axel Dumas, director of the luxury brand, on Friday 13 September, on the sidelines of the inauguration of the building renovated at great expense, in Riom (Puy-de-Dôme). In the centre of the sub-prefecture town, the luxury brand, which produces its leather goods exclusively in France, has occupied since the beginning of the year two buildings of a former tobacco factory that Seita operated until 1975, when this production site for Gauloises and Gitanes cigarettes was moved to the outskirts of the town, before its final closure in 2018 by Imperial Tobacco.
What the Riomois called the “manu” was a “ghost ship”“It took four years of construction to transform this industrial site, located in the heart of Riom, a town of 19,000 inhabitants about fifteen kilometres north of Clermont-Ferrand. In 2019, Hermès asked the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Entreprises agency, responsible for the economic development of the region, to help it find a production site, near the neighbouring town of Sayat, where the brand has been operating a leather goods factory for twenty years.
Very quickly, Hermès expressed its desire to choose an existing site to undertake the renovation. “On their first visit to the Riom tobacco factory, the group’s real estate managers fell in love”Sonia François and Vania de Oliveira from the public agency recall. Listed as a historical monument, the site, owned by a developer who had once planned a hotel there, was bought by the urban community of Riom Limagne et Volcans. Before being transferred to the “same amount” at Hermès, explains the president of the Auvergne community, Frédéric Bonnichon.
One new leather item per year.
Since then, the luxury brand has spent around €25 million – according to our information, without public support – to transform the 1930s building into a production workshop with the help of the agency Tracks; it will also house an apprenticeship training centre (CFA) similar to the ten CFAs it has set up in France from 2022, to train 1,600 people for the CAP for saddlers and leatherworkers. In the medium term, this 7,000-square-metre building, bathed in light, is expected to employ around 280 people to make Constance, Bolide and other Birkin bags entirely by hand.
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