How does Hermès keep from being a luxury factory?It’s “all about scale”, says Pierre-Alexis Dumas

How does Hermès keep from becoming just another luxury factory? Artistic director PIERRE-ALEXIS DUMAS offers up some clues to STEPHEN SHORT

manufacturer, accused the big establishments of ruining French manufacture; three or four laid down the law, reigning like masters over the market; and he gave it as his opinion that the only way of fighting them was to favour the small traders; above all, those who dealt in special classes of goods, to whom the future belonged.”

— Au Bonheur des Dames, Émile Zola

Hermès occupies a singular space in the diverse fashion ecosystem. Despite the brand being a neighbour on the high street to multinational luxury retailers from Louis Vuitton to Dior, it conducts business much like the Parisian comptoirs of the past. Yet Hermès, beloved for its Birkin and Kelly bags and its artful silk scarves, isn’t a shy, retiring wallflower. The Paris-based company reported a record 13 per cent rise in profits for 2016 to 1.1 billion euros, boosted by sales of its leather goods and saddlery – which represent 50 per cent of the group’s sales – and commanded a staggering 2.6 billion euros in sales. Silk and textiles, the group’s third-largest sector, account for 10 per cent of sales, at 515 million euros in 2016. The 181-year-old company employs more than 13,000 people worldwide.

So while it’s not the dusty old comptoir of drapery and flannelling owned by Uncle Baudu, who watches helplessly while the shimmering glass cathedral of the new Bon Marché department store goes up in Paris opposite his shop and the appetite for luxury gets its first mass outing, as detailed in Émile Zola’s 1883 novel Au Bonheur des Dames, Hermès retains and espouses the values, craftsmanship and personal interaction of those times.

The question is: how does Hermès do it? And how does the company not feel overshadowed by looming threats? Artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas, in town for the opening of the brand’s new flagship store in the Prince’s Building in Central, is unequivocal about its singular strength. “Hermès should be studied as a culture,” he says, it being “a really good example for other companies to follow.”

Yes, but how does Hermès retain its demonstrable sense of craft and art and intimacy throughout a group that boasts a turnover that exceeds several billion euros? Is there not some inherent contradiction? “No,” says Dumas, who professes that the answer is simple. “It’s a question of scale and the scale at which you work.” He goes on to explain that Hermès breaks down all of its business into small pieces and illustrates by way of example. In 1978, there were 80 craftsmen (Dumas uses the word as a generic term for men and women), and today there are 3,000 (including textiles). “So how do we stop it from becoming like a factory?” he poses.

Two factors make it so, says Dumas. “First, the golden rule: one craftsman, one object and a proper space in which to make it.” Second, the size of the leather manufacturers, of which Hermès uses more than 60 in France. “We