The episode in detail
Suzon et Suzette: bike accessories made in France, born during lockdown
Anne-Charlotte Péridon and Laetitia Cros left their jobs to create Suzon et Suzette, a Lyon-based brand of bike accessories made in France. The trigger came from an everyday problem: frozen hands despite gloves on winter bike rides. Anne-Charlotte sewed her first pair of handlebar mitts herself. Friends and family asked for more. The company was born from that.
The commercial observation was clear: almost all the bike accessories sold in France are made in China. Only 3% of clothing and textile accessories are made on French soil. Suzon et Suzette decided to fill that gap, with colourful products that break with a bike world dominated by black and grey.
“It’s completely absurd that today there is so little equipment that answers real cyclists’ problems and is French.”
Social inclusion sewing workshops in Lyon
Production is entrusted to social inclusion sewing workshops in the Lyon region. This choice adds an extra constraint to sourcing, but the women who founded the brand insist on it. Anne-Charlotte had discovered these structures while working for the city of Lyon. They realised there were more inclusion workshops in France than they had imagined.
Geographical closeness changes everything in the production relationship. The women visit the workshops practically every week. It was during one visit that they noticed manually fitting the press studs was becoming too physically demanding for the seamstresses. They invested in a pneumatic machine to solve the problem. This kind of adjustment would be impossible with a factory on the other side of the world.
“We’re in our workshops practically every week. It’s really teamwork. When you have things made thousands of kilometres away, you don’t get that closeness.”
Manufacturing in France without pushing prices too high
Suzon et Suzette handlebar mitts sell for 55 euros, within a market range of 35 to 90 euros. Competitiveness rests on several levers. The design is planned from the outset to simplify manufacturing. The zero-waste approach turns fabric offcuts into spin-off products such as the saddle cover or the skirt-guard clip, which reduces material costs.
The trade-off is on margins. Manufacturing in France means taking a smaller margin than competitors who produce in China. Partner shops accept this. Anne-Charlotte Péridon puts it bluntly: the margin is there to live on, not to get rich. The model holds up, but it demands a discipline in design and management that not every brand is ready to provide.
“We take a margin to live on. We’re in a society where people probably get too rich when they have things made elsewhere.”
From Decathlon to 100 shops in three years
Three months after the company was founded, several Decathlon and Monoprix stores ordered the products. That signal convinced the women to leave their jobs for good. Today, Suzon et Suzette is sold in around a hundred shops in France: Le Vieux Campeur, Nature et Découvertes, independents such as Cycle Bleen in the Lyon region, and, more recently, a sales point in Brussels.
The sales method stayed hands-on. At the start, Laetitia and Anne-Charlotte went knocking on shop doors with the handlebar mitts under their arms. The main argument fit in one sentence: it’s the only bike handlebar mitt made in France. In a market where two people in three say the origin of products matters to them, that argument was enough to open doors.
“The first big chains that opened the door for us were Decathlon and Monoprix. That took us from a few pairs of mitts to a real company.”
Made in France in cycling: why so few brands do it
The main obstacle is not cost, it’s complexity. In France, every component has to be sourced separately: fabrics, supplies, workshops. Sourcing takes a considerable amount of time, especially when starting out without a network. Abroad, a single contact handles everything, from prototype to delivery. The logistical ease of offshoring remains its best selling point.
In return, manufacturing in France offers a responsiveness that long supply chains cannot match. No parcels stuck at sea, no geopolitical uncertainty, no customs delays. The seamstresses themselves take part in improving the products by suggesting technical changes. This short feedback loop is a structural advantage of Made in France that offshored brands cannot reproduce.
“Our seamstresses sometimes tell us: I’d have done this differently on your mitt. We try it, and it works.”
