Today the local landscape has changed dramatically

At Saint-Amand-Montrond (Dear), the pole of jewellery will save know-how more than a century in relying on the high jewellery range and technological development.

Saint-Amand-Montrond, small town of 12,000 people on the fringes of the Cher, is a discreet and quiet city. This is perhaps what has attracted the brothers Moricault, Jewellers of their State, when they decided in 1888 to be relocate their Paris Workshop. Founders of the local jewellery tradition, they give birth to a new industry which will be its golden age after World War II. Saint-Amand then becomes the third pole French jewellery, behind Paris and Lyon, with the development of the string hollow, artisanal technique that allows to obtain less heavy jewelry and therefore less expensive. Today, the local landscape has changed dramatically. With the opening of markets, production shifted to low labour cost countries and the number of workshops has halved to be reduced to seven or eight, of which some installed recently. The sector, which had still 350 employees in 1990, now employs more than 100 workers. To the risk, public authorities before the folder, under the leadership of Senator UMP Serge Vinçon, Mayor of Saint-Amand, who fought for 15 years to save this know-how. "I don't want that be here an Ecomuseum around jewellery as an eco-Museum of the mine has been elsewhere." The project is to ensure the sustainability of this activity by promoting a diversified and quality, but it needs the corner of mechanization.

Pole actors know that should "draw the production to the top." This approach is already committed by certain workshops which are for example. Carmafix, which had resumed in 1993 the Léon-Martin workshop, began by creating his own brand of jewellery in order to convince the large claws of the quality of its production and has since obtained subcontracting markets. The Montdor workshop, who came in 2001 from Paris where he remained another production site, makes that foreign market and high-end jewelry for the big names in the place Vendôme. The strategy has paid because the company has increased from 8 to 33 employees and account still hire.

But the choice of prestige jewelry goes hand in hand with heavy investments for very limited series, whether it be melting, engraving, stamping. The pole can contribute to the funding of some machines. The ideal would be to create a technical centre to pool the means, or to find synergies between companies in a business where individualism is very said. "The solution through a collective approach to share our technology and our knowledge", recognizes Nadia Barry, President of Carmafix.

In the technical field, the pole will be able to inspire actions already committed to the local productive system (SPL) which had been implemented since 2002. Thus, the Regional Centre of innovation and transfer of technology (CRITT) of Vierzon has already proposed training days on 3D software, worked on the Elimination of waste and the creation of a virtual catalog, remained for the time being to the status of project.

Success also goes through the training, and including "training continues, to allow employees to master the use of machines and more sophisticated techniques, such as computer-aided design," observed Daniel Cambour, President of Montdor. The pole has a decisive advantage, the presence on its territory of the lycée professionnel Jean Guéhenno, one of the few in France to form the jewellery trades. "Equipment, skills, technology, it only remains to make the request," notes Denis Michenaud headmaster.

Even if the economic situation is difficult, the current context is not as negative as it sounds. "For the first time in ten years, the profession has not lost turnover and returned to the French production of the land", said President delegate of the French Union of jewellery, Bernadette Pinet-Cuoq, which supported the creation of the pole. The municipality hopes thus convince new businesses to "relocate" on the spot, in a 10 hectares ZAC located around the city of gold, a building built ten years ago to put forward the local expertise and that it wants to strengthen the attractiveness. But it also has to attract young creators, trained on the spot, which could settle in the future nursery or workshops-relay and provide breeding ground of the saint-amandois renewal.