Companies get creative to find, train handicraft workers
High-end companies get creative to find workers to make their products
It’s a simple test: Grab a pair of shoes and lace them up as quickly as possible.
Did you remember to skip every other hole as you crisscrossed the upper? Did you maintain a level of tightness throughout? Did you prevent the laces from twisting? Did you treat the tongue tenderly?
If you can respond with a resounding yes, then you might just have the golden hands required to land a job making shoes for Louis Vuitton. All of the upscale brand’s stiletto-heeled boots, logo-covered loafers, calf-leather sneakers and shimmering sandals come from Fiesso d’Artico, a town between Padua and Venice on Italy’s Riviera del Brenta, a stretch of grand villas that’s been a footwear shopping destination since the 13th century. A few minutes away, you’ll find the Museo della Calzatura, a museum and archive dedicated to this storied history. (Yes, those 17th-century pointy black shoes were made around here, and so were Nicholas Kirkwood’s “Back to the Future”-inspired peep-toe booties.)
Once upon a time, local artisans passed their skills from one generation to the next, keeping well-heeled Venetians well heeled. But those legacies have gradually faded, leaving the luxury producers of the region scrambling to fill their workshops. At Manufacture de Souliers Louis Vuitton (that’s French for Louis Vuitton’s shoe factory), human resources manager Sabina Sergi’s task is identifying potential employees. When she can’t poach from competitors, she recruits by word of mouth and at area high schools. Many arrive with little or no experience, she says, which is why certain aptitude tests — like that lacing one above — are used to discover raw talent.
For those who are hired, explains industrial director Paolo Secco, “There is a path. So they start from the most simple operation and then go through the other processes.” This onthe-job training, with veteran staffers teaching their co-workers, lasts for years.
Although taking an individualized approach has kept the factory chugging along, parent company LVMH — a multinational conglomerate responsible for 70 brands — recognizes that a lack of qualified artisans is an issue for every trade in the luxury spectrum. That’s why it developed a more-cohesive strategy for recruiting and cultivating the next generation: the Institut des Métiers d’Excellence, or IME.
Since its debut in France in 2014, the program has