Dim moves its hosiery production from Germany to France

The emblematic French brand DIM announced on Wednesday the transfer to France of practically all of its mesh production, until then partly carried out in Germany.

Dim Brands International (DBI), the underwear group that owns Dim but also Playtex and the German brand Nur Die, repatriates the production of around 19 million pairs of Nur Die stockings, hitherto manufactured in Schongau, in the southern Germany. This site, which employed 90 people, has closed.

Its manufacturing will now take place at the Autun site (Saône-et-Loire), Dim’s main unit and historic company that already produces around 60 million pairs of tights per year.

Thus, “more than 90% of the group’s footwear items will be woven” in Autun, announced DBI, owned by US private equity firm Regent LP.

Additional production will be done with “more or less the same workforce,” the boss said. Autun employs 600 people and a hundred temporary workers.

The Autun site currently has spare capacity, the company says without elaborating. “The relocation will consolidate it. We want to saturate it,” explained François Riston.

The future of this site, where the famous “Bas Dimanche” were created in the 1950s that made the company’s success, has regularly aroused fears, in particular during its acquisition, in 2021, by the Regent fund, based in California.

The latter owns 500 companies worldwide, in the fields of technology, consumer products, industry and media. In clothing, the ownership of the brands Escada, La Senza, Club Monaco… stands out.

Dim was founded in 1953. It was then a small hosiery company making stylish and affordable hosiery originally marketed under the “Bas Dimanche” brand. Having become a symbol of “Made in France”, it claims to be the leading French underwear brand.

The company had more than a thousand employees ten years ago before undergoing several ownership changes.

In 2014, Dim was sold to the US multinational Hanesbrand, resulting in the loss of 265 jobs. Hanes had sold at the end of 2021 to Regent LP DBI billed 500 million euros last year.