Editor’s Note
This article explores the extraordinary security measures at Orest, a discreet French manufacturer for top jewelry brands. Its operations are so valuable they have reshaped local policing, highlighting the immense, hidden logistics behind luxury goods.
In Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, the fine jewelry manufacturer Orest resembles Fort Knox. The ultra-secure site bears no external signs identifying its occupant, a subcontractor for major houses like Van Cleef & Arpels, Tiffany, and Cartier. The value of the materials stored on-site even justified “the reactivation of the BAC [anti-crime brigade] in the city,” recalled Mayor Bruno Toussaint on March 6, 2024, during the site’s inauguration. Orest, a subsidiary of the holding company Platinum Invest (LVMH) since 2023, set up shop four years ago in this economically fragile employment basin of the Vosges, with the goal of building a brand-new factory where 250 employees now work. The bet paid off. A few months ago, the installation of a foundry on its premises completed the site’s 100% autonomy in jewelry manufacturing (defined by their value, from €1,000 to €50,000 per piece). Starting from precious alloy granules, it now produces raw pieces that are subsequently worked by its jewelers, setters, and polishers.
Born in Alsace, the company may not stop there. The available land adjacent to its Vosges site is a testament to this. Its manager, Jean-Julien Koerin, says he is
(value above €50,000), where the prestigious houses of Place Vendôme are waging a war for talent. An initial collaboration has been launched with a sister company, the high jewelry manufacturer Abysse, another Platinum Invest subsidiary based in Paris and La Rochelle. To support Abysse, Orest is starting the setting of high jewelry pieces in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges this year.
In this former textile town, far from major metropolises, Orest found the essential workforce for its growth. The group, with 750 employees and €110 million in revenue in 2023, was cramped in its Erstein (Bas-Rhin) workshops and struggled to attract profiles.
says the site manager. Marked by an unemployment rate of 10% – the figure exceeded 14% ten years ago – the Vosges region opened its arms wide to Orest. Cindy, 39, is currently following a tailor-made five-month jeweler training program with the goal of joining Orest. This former temporary worker for the equipment supplier Forvia states she had
in her old job. Attracted by the prospect of
the operator has developed a passion for the precision work of jewelry.
To establish this local training program (527 hours), Orest worked hand in hand with another local manufacturer, the SME Aurigane Créations. The two companies received financial support from the Grand Est region and, for the pedagogical part, from the Nancy-Metz academy, the Union des industries et métiers de la métallurgie de Lorraine, and the Baumont high school in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges.
lists Olivier Jacquot, academic advisor for continuing education in artisanal trades. The first class in 2022 included, among its 17 trainees, four former employees of the automotive subcontracting site Inteva, closed in 2020. In 2024, out of 32 trainees, 23 were hired by Orest and Aurigane Créations and 16 are still in their positions.
Although buffeted by the economic climate, the sector shows a certain confidence in the future. Aurigane Créations, which employs 80 people, is doubling its workshop space this year and plans to do the same with its workforce. This manufacturer, created in 1997 based on a gold foundry before diversifying into precious metal casting and jewelry piece creation, was bought last July from its founder by Van Cleef & Arpels (Richemont group).
Proof that the Vosges department is attracting interest from subcontractors to prestigious houses, 50 kilometers from Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, in Épinal, a specialist in leather goods from Franche-Comté, particularly watch straps for the watchmaking industry, has set up shop. Originally from Doubs, the SIS group began producing high-end leather goods pieces a year ago in the premises of a former food distribution chain. Thirty people work there, including 12 seamstresses from a high-end lingerie manufacturer, the company Alcée, liquidated in 2023.
analyzes Jean-Yves Chauvy, CEO of SIS. His group of 1,700 employees plans to build a factory there by 2027. The goal is to replicate in the Vosges prefecture what SIS managed to achieve over the last five years in Vesoul (Haute-Saône), where it commissioned a workshop employing 200 people in 2019. Still in the same basin, Toiltech, a discreet LVMH subsidiary with about a hundred employees (€24.5 million revenue in 2023), notably manufactures canvas for the famous Vuitton brand bags. Has the landlocked nature of the Vosges department become an asset for this highly manual production? Olivier Jacquot is convinced,