The surprising renaissance of Bohin

In 1990, Didier Vrac was hired as head of purchasing for Bohin, a company which manufactured needles and which had been managed by the same family for six generations.  The company’s director considered pessimistically that economic decline was inevitable, and allowed the company to go into liquidation. Didier Vrac refused to face unemployment, and instead decided to buy the company. He relocated its costly head offices from Paris to the factory’s premises in Normandy, and developed the company internationally. In the United States, he discovered a flourishing niche in the market, patchwork : a form of sewing practised by a wealthy and sophisticated clientele. He rented stands at professional fairs as well as at fairs for the general public in order to publicise the company, and in so doing, enabled Bohin to gain an excellent reputation in the United States, which then boosted the recognition and success of the brand in France. He further strengthened this reputation by opening a museum on the factory’s premises in 2014 with financial help from the local authorities, before selling the company to one of his employees in 2017.