Editor’s Note
This article highlights how a specialized jewelry firm in France is bridging tradition and innovation by establishing an internal training center. The initiative aims to secure a skilled workforce and preserve meticulous craftsmanship in a modern context.
Specializing in jewelry and precious stone setting in Charente-Maritime, the company 1B2L is opening a training hub to aim for excellence and recruit its future employees.
Published on Tuesday, September 3, 2024
The movements are intended to be millimeter-precise, meticulous, and blend ancestral know-how with new technologies.
Based in the La Rochelle metropolitan area, in Charente-Maritime, the company 1B2L cultivates both discretion and the work of a master goldsmith. Its specialties? Jewelry and precious stone setting – among others – for prestigious international brands. In its well-guarded workshops, engravers, setters, and polishers are busy bringing luxurious and complex jewelry to life. At the helm of 1B2L? Luc Beunet, a jewelry specialist, and Éric Vincent, named Meilleur Ouvrier de France (MOF) in 2023 in the “haute joaillerie setting” category. Their skills have long attracted major brands and groups and have led 1B2L to expand its walls and invest heavily in Charente-Maritime.
1B2L therefore moved and invested in a new 2000 m² site before embarking, in 2021, on a vast reflection to create workshops of 3800 m².
It must be said that the jewelry sector is doing wonderfully and is hiring extensively.
To overcome these recruitment difficulties and meet their clients’ demands, 1B2L is preparing to open its own internal “training hub” in September 2024. Jewelry, setting, polishing, engraving, and even foundry: the La Rochelle-based company intends to maintain “complete autonomy” to better aim for excellence.
Financially supported by the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region to the tune of 600,000 euros, the company 1B2L intends to train 40 people per year. Recently fitted out, this training hub is equipped with traditional and emblematic jewelry tools, but also with ultra-modern equipment like binocular microscopes. Now used to set precious stones, these machines limit eye strain – setting a stone requires between 10 minutes and 3 hours of work.
Forget the small monocular loupes and the traditional image associated with jewelry artisans. The profession is evolving, borrowing from other industrial sectors to modernize and also becoming more feminized.
Long established in Paris alongside luxury brands, Éric Vincent was among the first to relocate to the provinces to establish a setting and then jewelry business there. That was in 2001.
The MOF then wished to combine his professional activity with an attractive, more accessible living environment and had set his sights on La Rochelle. The future proved him right and could – why not – transform Nouvelle-Aquitaine into a new stronghold of French jewelry.