France Luxury Shirt: the luxury shirt manufacturer that combines savoir-faire and industrialization

Since its beginnings in 1830, the sewing workshop has stood the test of time. Initially, it specialized in garment making for military leather goods (satchels and cartridge belts). In the 1900s, the workshop employed up to 300 people and then expanded into men's ready-to-wear. In the early 90s, it specialized in men's luxury ready-to-wear. In 2006, the atelier was acquired by the FIM ateliers network and managed by Jacques Martin-Lalande, who ushered in a new era of growth with new luxury customers and diversification into Women. In 2012, Diego du Réau joined the atelier as manager and acquired it in 2020. "Today we do 80% men and 20% women. Of course, we can make women's blouses with the same savoir-faire as men's shirts. We also make hybrid products, such as lightweight unlined jackets" explains Diego Du Réau. Added to this is a product development unit for the development of collection or catwalk pieces.

The challenge of training

With a workforce of 70, including 20 on professionalization contracts and 15 in training, the France Luxury Shirt workshop continues to expand: "we're clearly getting bigger because we have to meet our customers' demand, with today's strategic challenge being training".

To meet this challenge, the workshop has created its in-house training school. One person is 100% dedicated to training in order to bring teams and new recruits up to speed, bearing in mind that learning takes an average of 3 years. A progressive approach has been adopted: "operators are encouraged to master a sewing task in terms of quality and speed on different materials, before eventually progressing to other skills according to their aspirations. But we also need versatility, partly because operators demand it, and partly so that they know how to work on different designs". So there's a balance to be struck between versatility and specialization.

Diego Du Réau engages with local structures, such as Pôle Emploi, associations, forums, to find recruitment solutions, particularly in inclusion. "Today we've set up a sewing training program in one of Montargis's disadvantaged neighborhoods, where overall we find isolated women with children from immigrant backgrounds. We make our staff available to train them in sewing. The training takes place 4 days a week in the mornings, enabling them to look after the children for the rest of the day. Our aim is to show that we can do things differently and that it works." Explains Diego Du Réau.

But the COVID-19 crisis has changed the relationship to the company and to work. "At operator level, beyond the technical training available to them, there is now a major need for human support"he explains. Diego Du Réau involves his employees in building a collective project for the company and defining its raison d'être: "what is the company for, what are its missions and values. Among other things, this involves preserving an ancestral savoir-faire, which is superb and really belongs to a manufacture, and then there's also the beauty of the products we make."

Diego Du Réau, head of the France Luxury Shirt workshop and vice-president of the Groupement de la Fabrication Française.

Significant investments

The 2021 France Relance plan was a decisive step in the atelier's development, enabling it to acquire its own buildings, invest in industrial equipment and reorganize to gain in competitiveness. "To do this, we called on a service provider who helped us organize the production tool and work on the communication and management mode in order to bring several teams up to managerial posture." Since then, the daily organization of the workshop revolves around a point at the start of the day, where the teams address various elements such as organization according to the designs to be made, the objectives to be achieved, quality control... "This has paid off, whether in terms of the general atmosphere, productivity or quality requirements."

The workshop has also invested in innovation through the acquisition of an automatic cutting machine with camera, which can rectify an angular deviation on the fabric, or a continuous heat-sealing machine. "These are very significant investments. To give you a comparison, a conventional automatic cutter costs €100,000, while a sewing machine costs €1,500. Where we were under-capacity in cutting to supply garment making, today we've become over-capacity." The workshop has just equipped itself with the ERP developed by ARImod (as part of Innofabmod), to manage orders, delivery notes, invoicing and cutting. A solution that aims to be deployed at all the workshop's workstations by 2024.

Although these investments were substantial, Diego du Réau is now seeing the benefits, with a not inconsiderable gain in productivity; especially when you consider that a shirt requires assembling 20 to 30 parts on average.

On the CSR front, the workshop is responding to environmental challenges by working on its carbon footprint with the introduction of buses to pool journeys and transport costs. Future plans for building expansion include better insulation and the installation of solar panels. Other concrete actions, such as the recycling of fabric offcuts that has been operational for several years, underline its sustainable commitment.

France Luxury Shirt has been able to evolve while preserving its heritage and savoir-faire, thanks to its innovative strategies, major investments and CSR commitment, which reconcile tradition and modernity.