130 YEARS OF CRAFTSMANSHIP
"I never saw my mum idle"
Edith Caillet welcomed us to her cosy living room on the ground floor of her family home on Rue du Lignolat, Aubonne, just over the road from where Elite mattresses are produced in the Caillet workshops. Edith Caillet is a bright, elegant woman with a remarkable memory. For our 130th anniversary year, she’s retraced the recent history of Elite for us; to some extent, it’s her own story, too.
I n 1946, Geneva-Cointrin had just opened an intercontinental runway – and Robert Caillet travelled by train to Zurich on business. He had just bought Elite, a company located in Caslano in Italian-speaking Switzerland which made bed bases and spring mattresses. During the journey, he suffered a stroke; he survived, but was left partially paralysed. Edith Caillet was 7, her older brother Maurice was 14; her sister Marianne, the eldest child of the family, was 17. Even with the company being located opposite the family home in Rue du Lignolat in Aubonne, Robert could no longer manage its affairs on his own. His wife Yvonne stepped in, enlisting her mother to take care of the children; with the help of her generous and open-minded husband, she gradually took over the business. As Edith Caillet recalls, ‘My father was in no way a male chauvinist.” Yvonne Caillet turned out to be a good entrepreneur at a time when in Switzerland, wives tended to be subservient to their husbands. Married
women still had to ask their husband’s permission to sign a contract of employment or a lease, or to open a bank account, but out of necessity, Yvonne Caillet broke out of her traditional role of housewife. She was active on all fronts: in the workshops, drafting bids, doing administrative work. As Edith Caillet acknowledges, with some admiration, ‘I never saw my mum idle.’ Robert passed away in 1948, when Edith was just nine years old. The following year, Yvonne relocated the mattress and bed workshop in Italian-speaking Switzerland to Aubonne, with the result that Italian could be heard in the Rue du Lignolat workshops as artisans from the former factory site moved there to work. With their springs and wool and horsehair fillings, Elite mattresses became renowned throughout the region for their quality and ability to retain their shape, in particular due to their patented ribbed surround. Marianne soon started helping her mother, while Maurice completed an apprenticeship in upholstery in German-speaking Switzerland. For her part, Edith went to Germany and then England to finish her schooling. “I was
just like any other girl; I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the firm.”
In 1953, Maurice Caillet officially took over his parents’ business, Etablissement Caillet, at the age of 21, making him the third in a dynasty of Vaud upholsterers and saddlers. Maurice enjoyed speed even more than upholstery, entering motor races and joining the Ecurie de la Côte racing team. At the 1956 Grand Prix des Frontières 1956, the Maserati driven by Maurice collided with British driver Chris Threlfall’s Tojeiro-Bristol. Maurice was seriously injured and Edith Caillet had to become still more involved in the company, even as Marianne settled in Milan with her husband. Despite not having any particular career aspirations at the time, “I became involved in the firm quite naturally,” explains Edith Caillet. The 1960s marked a turning-point. The workshop on Rue du Lignolat was no longer up to code. A new build was required; here too, Yvonne Caillet demonstrated her good business instincts, buying some land that was near Allaman railway station – and unbeknown to her, also close to
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