Restart and reshoring. French leather goods Rioland has, from 2018 to today, almost doubled the workforce, and only suffered a slowdown due to Covid. And now it foresees new investments and new hires. In other words, it has planned the expansion of existing production sites as well as the construction of new laboratories. To overcome the difficulty of recruiting, the company activated an internal training course in 2019.
French leather goods Rioland
The Rioland group, based in Baudres, is a well-known leather goods manufacturer, partner of the main French brands. Since 2018, it has seen a remarkable expansion that has increased the number of employees from 350 to currently 660. And it says it has good prospects for the future. “The crisis slowed our growth, while we had just made major investments,” Isabelle Bordier, Rioland’s Human Resources Director, told France Bleu. “The market is now back to normal, but we feel a certain fragility linked to the evolution of the health situation”.
Investments
Rioland’s production is spread over 8 sites (7 are in Indre’s districts, one in Vierzon’s). Each is “dedicated” to a single customer in order to respect their commercial secrets. In Châteauroux, in 2019, the French group launched a course to train future employees. And in 2020, in the same city, it started a second laboratory for which a new expansion is already planned. Thus, the workforce could increase from the current 70 to 300 employees within a maximum of 4 years. Furthermore, in Baudres, where Rioland’s headquarters is located, the construction (by mid-2022) of a new building of 2,000 square meters is planned, with 50/60 new hires. Rioland explains that the new expansion in Baudres is the “positive” consequence of the pandemic crisis, that has generated productive reshoring operations from Asia to France.
Image from maroquinerierioland.com
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