Since 7 am, this Thursday, July 21, the thirty seamstresses of the ready-to-wear manufacturer Le Minor have been behind their machines. The brand of sweaters based in the town of Guidel (Morbihan), northwest of Lorient, was to complete the production of thousands of pieces by the end of July to ship them to Japan, to Beams and Ships, and to France , at Monoprix.
Its order book is full. The bins are overflowing with turtlenecks in guilloché stitch, merino sailor sweaters and cotton sailor tops to be assembled, ironed, checked and put in a bag. The clothing workshop is brand new, since this spring, after the partial renovation of a 7,000 square meter building built in 1977. And the twelve automatic knitting looms, six of which were purchased second-hand, are running at full speed.
In September, the manufacturer will install a so-called “intelligent” cutting table, capable of cutting the pieces of jersey according to the stripes to be connected: the investment of 240,000 euros is financed by a subsidy. This will be the second envelope of the 400,000 euros allocated under the France Relance plan, of which the company was the winner in November 2020, explain its managers and shareholders, Sylvain Flet and Jerôme Permingeat.
Refusal to relocate
In 2018, with the support of Alain Sourisseau, a specialist in reviving SMEs, these two thirty-year-olds bought the Breton company owned by the heirs of Jean-Luc Grammatico, the third owner of the SME since its creation in 1922.
The brand of sweaters is best known to Bretons, maritime professionals and officers of the national navy, of which, until 2010, it manufactured “the regulation jersey”. His factory employed up to 250 people in the 1970s. That is to say before the crisis, the surge in clothing imports and the relocation of French clothing production to Eastern Europe and the Maghreb.
Although still adored by its customers, in Japan and in the maritime cooperatives of Brittany, Le Minor is struggling in 2018; Marie-Christine Grammatico, its manager and shareholder, has always refused to relocate its production. And every year, it bails out the company. Five years after the photo of Arnaud Montebourg posing in Armor Lux marinière in “one” of the Parisian Magazine, to praise the tricolor industry, the Breton rival caps at 1.5 million euros in sales. The Guided SME has twenty-five employees “and a single computer for the entire management team”recalls its designer, Claire Egault.
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