Automated as manual labor may be in heavy industry, in other industries that require high aesthetics and technology, labor is desperately needed and, unfortunately, scarce. In the house of haute couture and accessories like hers Hermes, the old masters leave, and the new ones do not come to replace them. One of them is Lionel Prudhomme, who speaks with Financial Times for prototypes of limited edition handbags of the new design at the Hermes workshop in Paris. There is a version of the classic Kelly model with painted wood panels, a clasp/buckle embellished with a whimsical galaxy design that sells for 22,000 euros, as well as several others in which the skin is rounded in colors such as dazzling blue and faded orange. This tannery in Paden, one of 21 Hermes workshops in France, is housed in a modern glass and concrete complex. This is where the designers’ vision turns into a tangible product. “The idea comes as a prototype, but we will work on improving it so that we can recreate it every time,” said the head of the atelier. Prudhomme, like other experienced leather craftsmen, has been working there for the past 30 years and can make at least 85 different models. Masters like him are becoming increasingly valuable and rare commodities.

As the Financial Times notes, after several years of impressive growth thanks to the insatiable appetite of the Chinese for luxury, the European industry is now under strong pressure. And this is due to the need for new employees for a wide range of jobs, from manufacturing to retail and management. “These artisan jobs often require years of training, sometimes over a decade, but they are often viewed as a dead-end career,” says Benedict Epine, president of industry organization Comite Colbert. “At the same time, we are seeing the gradual disappearance of training programs for these skills, because young people are not interested.” Consider that leather craftsmen spend 15 hours crafting a Hermes bag by hand, and their wages, as the house itself indicates, far exceed the French minimum wage and may include shares in the respective company. Building a team of highly skilled craftsmen is a particular challenge in an industry where outsourcing to other countries is generally not possible to maintain quality and origin, two factors that justify the highest product prices. Especially for Hermes bags, the waiting list can mean that years later, some woman might get one.

The average annual salary for a craftsman in France is 25,350 euros, but in the LVMH group, which includes Hermes, it is much higher. It can also, for example, offer workshop/studio workers a bonus equal to the average salary of 18 months each year, thanks to profit-sharing schemes where a bank teller earns an average of 14,000 to 24,000 euros.