Louis Vuitton has ended the fiscal year with a bang! March saw the Parisian luxury making two big announcements – first, the hiring of Virgil Abloh as its new Artistic Director and then by revealing its plans to open three new factories in France.
In an effort to keep up with the demand for its leather goods and cut down on production and lead time, the fashion label will kick off the first workshop beginning July this year. This would raise up the number of Louis Vuitton’s French workshops to 16.
The second site is expected to be unveiled by early 2019, followed by a third in the latter half of next year.
The new workshop openings will entail an expansion in the brand’s current leather goods and handbag lines and additionally allow for delivering of products to consumers within a week of an order being placed in comparison to its earlier promise of two weeks.
For this, 500 new people will be employed for two new production sites which will be based out of Western France, raising the number of the brand’s leather good specialists to 4,000. The figure sheds light on the growing consumer base, spending power and demand of the luxury leather goods industry which includes handbags and wallets as well.
Apart from its France-based workshops, Louis Vuitton operates from two factories in California to cater to its US clients and has plans to open another factory in Texas soon. The brand also operates leather workshops in Catalonia and production sites in Portugal and Romania, to cater to the European market.
