Atelier Tuffery expands its vertical model with Merino wool production

Atelier Tuffery has been steadily increasing—not simply in gross sales, which grew by 20% between 2023 and 2024 to achieve €4.6 million earlier than tax, but additionally in objective. Since taking on the household enterprise in 2014, Julien Tuffery, the fourth-generation descendant of founder Célestin Tuffery, and his associate Myriam have remained targeted on reinforcing French craftsmanship and native manufacturing.

On the finish of 2024, this method led to the combination of two shepherds into the corporate and the acquisition of 150 Merino d’Arles ewes, which gave start to lambs. After the primary lamb births, Atelier Tuffery now has a flock of 300 head. The corporate harvested the wool within the spring, which might be included into some 1,500 merchandise in its Autumn-Winter 2025/26 assortment. It appears an anachronistic selection in a trend and textile world with a fragmented worth chain, however one which the corporate’s administration has accepted.

For greater than ten years, the couple has been steadily increasing their vary of denims, priced between €100 and €250, combining basic and up to date silhouettes, and their native manufacturing. Their Florac workshop quickly grew to become too small, and in 2022 the corporate invested €2.5 million to construction its manufacturing and inaugurate a 2,000-square-meter manufacturing unit, open to the general public.

By prioritizing manufacturing instruments over communication, Atelier Tuffery is betting on making a buzz across the values of high quality, social and environmental duty, and proximity, with three-quarters of its merchandise made in its workshops. Regardless of an advanced client setting, the model continues to develop. It boasts a gross working revenue margin of 10%, enabling it to launch a brand new emblematic mission with the creation of its personal flock of Merino ewes.

“It is a query of consistency and sincerity. To clarify the choice to purchase our personal ewes, I’ve to level out that we have launched into an extended journey. I feel that tomorrow we’ll be promoting a pair of pants not simply because they’re stunning and well-made, but additionally for the entire story behind them. We have been 30 years previous after we took over the corporate, and we need to move on the keys to an organization that might be on the innovative in 30–40 years. During the last ten years, we’ve invested in instruments, manufacturing, transmission, and coaching. This represents some €7–8 million, however we have been in a position to do it whereas remaining worthwhile. If we had invested in promoting or advertising, Atelier Tuffery would definitely have a completely totally different popularity. However what would we’ve left behind? Our imaginative and prescient is that thirty years from now, we can’t have the ability to afford a mannequin whose uncooked supplies are primarily cotton and elastane, which suggests petrochemicals. However we won’t construct every thing we do on garment making, transmission, and manufacturing transformation if we do not management our uncooked materials sovereignty.”

A mastered worth chain

Over the previous ten years, the corporate has regularly labored its means up the worth chain, initially securing its canvas suppliers, claiming to work with 4 weavers: the final Tarn workshop purchased out 4 years in the past, a workshop within the Vosges, a family-run firm in northern Italy, and a Spanish denim producer, Royo.

On the knitwear aspect, the model works with French firms Malterre and Lemahieu. Even when, for pragmatic causes, it retains a small proportion of its vary incorporating 1.8% elastane, the corporate has additionally set about diversifying the supplies it makes use of.

Along with cotton, denim’s flagship materials, the model exploits and energizes the availability chains of different French sources (which additionally allow it to say a carbon affect thrice decrease than that of different denims in the marketplace), reminiscent of linen, hemp, and wool. For the final ten years, the corporate has been working with Merino sheep breeders within the south of France so as to add worth to French wool, and claims to have recovered 15 tons of wool by 2024. This method has enabled the corporate to state that 20% of its gross sales at the moment are generated by merchandise whose cotton has been changed by regionally sourced bio-fibers.

By 2025, Atelier Tuffery may have taken an additional step in the direction of growing merchandise for which it controls your complete worth chain, from agropastoralism to gross sales in its Montpellier workshop and retailer.

“The wool mission was very near our hearts as a result of it comes from our area, which is assessed as a UNESCO World Heritage Website for its sub-Mediterranean agropastoralism. For lots of of years, transhumant flocks of sheep have formed these territories. After we need to construct a commonsense sovereignty, we flip to productions tailored to the territory. Wool is one such product, even when the business has collapsed with the event of globalized cotton and artificial supplies. We have labored laborious to redeploy the business in Occitania. There are millions of tons of wool in our area, and it might be a disgrace to not use it when it’s burnt. When Myriam and I began knocking on farmers’ doorways to make use of native wool in our denims, we have been seen as loopy. It took numerous R&D to search out the most effective blends of supplies, however we did it!”

The corporate has structured its processing chain for wool collected in Lozère. It’s then washed in Sologne at Laurent Laine, earlier than being combed at Dumortier in Tourcoing. Next, the fabric is distributed to the Filature de Dreuilhe in Ariège, earlier than being despatched to the Tissages d’Autan in Tarn, and at last to the Tuffery manufacturing unit in Florac, the place the clothes are made. After accumulating some 15 tons final yr with its companions, the model goals to keep up this harvest of Lacaune wool and add some two tons of its personal Merino wool manufacturing inside three years.

“We’re lastly beginning to get to the guts of why I consider in reindustrialization: to achieve volumes that enable us to have logical industrial operations. However we have needed to work laborious, as a result of we’ve to promote them. Integrating our personal wool is the final stage of the rocket. Having our personal Merino wool provides us a really clear imaginative and prescient of wool high quality. And we’re assured that it will unfold all through the area.”

A technique rooted in agropastoralism

For Julien Tuffery, the selection to construct up this herd is a protection of agropastoralism, with animals that stay freely all yr spherical and are thus extra immune to illness, weeding the vineyards of the Hérault in winter and ascending through the Mediterranean garrigues to the plateaux of Lozère in summer time. Like its manufacturing, this herd reinforces the model’s terroir picture. However the integration of this exercise can also be primarily based on the corporate’s have to safe its provides.

“This mission has very substantial prices, however we could not carry it out with out integrating it. These sheep serve our day by day wants, as a result of we’re greater than only a denims model. We’re an area participant. We’re in a position to finance it as a result of it is a part of the corporate’s general financial system, with a logic of ‘model that makes, model that sells’. At present, we’re doing it with our monetary energy, so we are able to say to ourselves that in twenty years, we’ll have constructed up a herd of woollens that can allow us to design tomorrow’s enterprise fashions,” says the entrepreneur. “We have been fairly traumatized by what occurred to linen. Linen twill materials at the moment are promoting at round €35 a meter, excluding tax. It is sophisticated as a result of Asian nations are pre-empting us. If we are able to keep away from this state of affairs with wool, all the higher.”

A product with “a narrative to inform”

The CEO admits to an obsession with mastering his enterprise mannequin, taking the time to construct and consolidate the totally different strata of his mission. He focuses on worthwhile progress, ensuring to regularly enhance his manufacturing capability to fulfill demand on his e-commerce web site, at his manufacturing unit, and within the Montpellier boutique opened final yr.

“We thrive in digital, however carry out higher bodily as a result of our in-person expertise aligns extra with who we’re—an excellence of merchandise to the touch, a robust story to inform. However we do not make any business choices that may injury our values. Earlier than growing a community of boutiques, we should be positive we’ve the merchandise to promote in these boutiques. You want factories and provide chains that stand the take a look at of time. At a time when many firms have been accelerating their business rollout, we insisted on our manufacturing amenities. We’re tremendous producers: what’s essential is that we generate a brilliant margin. We’ve got very strong shareholders’ fairness. That is cool, as a result of if you go to see your banker, that is the very first thing he appears at.”

This deal with profitability is underpinned by a imaginative and prescient of economic autonomy to drive long-term transformation. With this in thoughts, Julien Tuffery admits that in the meanwhile, he isn’t contemplating growing wholesale gross sales, because the margins of resellers right now don’t enable him to keep up costs in keeping with the market, in his opinion.

“That will imply a retail value of lower than €40,” he says. “Proper now, at €40, I’ve made half a pair of pants. I do not need to change our mannequin. In 1983, my dad went from 60 to 3 folks in a village of two,000 inhabitants, as a result of massive retailers left for North Africa in a single day. We have discovered a lesson from this, and quite a lot of humility about growth.”

Then again, Atelier Tuffery is seeking to the longer term. Its industrial mannequin is designed to be duplicated in different areas, with websites which are “hyper-human, hyper-agile, hyper-competent, hyper-versatile” and in a position to reply quickly to native wants. However the subsequent essential step might be business. The model feels able to open new shops below its personal title.