Hermès announces the creation of a new leather goods hub in France
To keep pace with the ever-growing success of its leather goods and saddlery business, Hermès announced on 22 April that it will establish a tenth hub of expertise in Normandy, and the opening of a new leather workshop in Colombelles in the Calvados department, by 2028. Ultimately, 260 jobs will be created.
The latest figures from the Hermès group, released on 17 April, showed strong momentum in the first quarter of 2025, bucking the general trend. Leather goods and saddlery posted 10% growth (and €1.8 billion in revenue), offsetting the difficulties experienced by other groups in this sector. While the LVMH group announced plans to strengthen its leather goods production sites in the United States if no agreement was reached between the European Community and the US administration, Hermès has confirmed its intention to consolidate 100% of its leather goods production in France.
This announcement is part of the development of a tenth manufacturing hub for the Hermès group, whose leather goods production sites are currently located in nine of France's thirteen regions. Last September, a new production workshop was inaugurated in Riom, in the Puy-de-Dôme department, complementing an existing hub. The opening of this new production site in Normandy comes on top of three other sites currently under development in L'Isle d'Espagnac (Charente), Loupes (Gironde) and Charleville-Mézières (Ardennes).
As in Riom, where one of the wings of the town's former tobacco factory, an industrial site dating back to 1877 and listed as a historic monument since 2004, is being renovated, this 27th leather goods workshop will be built on a plot of land belonging to the Normandy Metallurgical Company (SMN), a former industrial flagship that operated in Normandy from 1917 to 1993. These locations are also the result of an initiative to ‘irrigate an employment pool,’ as Olivier Fournier, Executive Vice President of Governance and Development at Hermès, said at the inauguration last September.
The creation of 260 jobs "will draw on the expertise of the teams at the group’s leather workshops, and the École Hermès des savoir-faire. The school, which has been recognised as an apprenticeship training centre by the French Ministry of Education since 2021, will train new artisans in close collaboration with the Normandy regional education authority and local vocational training partners," explains the press release. Furthermore, this number of employees corresponds to a guideline that Hermès sets for itself each time. Olivier Fournier explained: ‘It is a strategic decision not to have any site with more than 300 people. It is a question of human relations, because it ensures that everyone knows each other.’
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