Where are your products manufactured?

This is a recurring question, and one that we answer with complete transparency: our garments are manufactured in Vietnam, Tunisia and in France. Our back packs are manufactured in China as is 90 of luggage world-wide. A small part (10% - 15%) is manufactured in France (the MadeinFrance by Raidlight range), but the rest comes from further afield, it’s no secret.
But take care we’re talking here about assembling and manufacturing. Because 100% of our products are thought-out, designed, tested, marketed and shipped from Saint-Genest-Malifaux in France. It represents more than 50% of French added value in the product.

Why manufacture in China and in Vietnam?

We want and must stay within market price lines. If we manufacture our back packs in France, they would be two or three times more expensive, does a market exist for this?? To sell at market price we are compelled to manufacturing in Asia.

So how do you manage to manufacture Made in France by Raidlight?

It’s a deliberate choice to attempt to manufacture in France. Deliberate because in this time of “crisis” we want to bring a “social”??civic change to our products, this comports a risk: that our products, costing 30% more than their “off-shore” equivalent, don’t find customers. And we are limiting the cost difference by honing down our profit margins and by asking our retailers to do the same.
But either we complain about unemployment and do nothing, or we react and create work, here at Raidlight we react.

Today we propose a choice to our customers:
• Classic at market price, or
• Made in France a little more expensive and different

We also emphasise that we’ve opted for articles that are easier to manufacture, this approach isn’t possible when re-locating more complex items like our back packs, where there the cost would more than triple

 
 

Do you chose your (off-shore) sub-contractors?

We chose the factories where work conditions are acceptable, and in accordance with the norms of that country. To reply to clichés “where children are not employed, where there is no slavery”. But we mustn’t delude ourselves, these are not European norms and salaries. However, when you want to make items of high quality with higher added value like Raidlight, then you need high quality manufacturing units, with higher social values and with good working conditions so that the job is well done.

> See our partners

Do you inspect the working conditions on-site?

We regularly visit the factories with whom we work. I think that it’s the best way to judge, to understand and to see what really happens. Personally, I’m often positively surprised (happily!): our factories are not the clichés that we often see on TV, even though we know for sure that they exist.
For this aspect to be transparent we’ve decided to put on-line, on this website, photos of the workshops where our products are manufactured.

See the workshops in Vietnam, China and Tunisia.

Raidlight, Made in ...?

Once again, even for items coming from the other side of the planet, more than 50% of the added value is French (design, production follow-up, marketing, logistics).
But more importantly don’t judge a country in comparison to another, I don’t judge a worker by his nationality (a Chinese worker is not of lesser value than a French worker) but by his values and his know-how. We can badly manufacture (socially and quality-wise) in France as equally as we can overseas.
It’s important that, whether it be for Made in France by Raidlight or for the other ranges, is that it is done with respect.

Remarks collected by V. Charbonnier – Independent journalist