Well, as I have promissed in my first post, here are some impressions from Ibach and Delemont...
This whole trip was my idea, as I am quite fond of SAKs. A few months ago I have sent a mail to Victorinox asking whether is possible to visit the factory.
Nice lady from Vic's PR politely declined the possibility of visit to the Ibach factory, while another nice lady from Delemont said, sure, it's not a problem, when would you like to come?
Visiting the former Wenger plant sounded nice, but not quite satisfactory, so I shot higher, almost to the top, and mailed Mr. Urs Wyss, one of the highest executives at Victorinox.
I was pleasently surprised to find out that Mr. Wyss was willing to take my wish into consideration, and after a few e-mails, we agreed on the date, 25th of June. Then I scheduled the visit to Delemont for the day after Ibach.
Quite a few of my friends found this trip interesting, so a group of 20 of us was welcomed by Mr. Wyss himself in front of the Victorinox factory in Ibach-Schwyz. Mr. Wyss was even friendlier in person than on the net, and we were split into two groups, one guided by Mr. Wyss himself, while the other were guided by another employee of Victorinox.
I do not think that I shall write much about the actual production process, anyone can see that in detail on Youtube. We were allowed into every part of the plant, we saw every process, talked to some of the workers, but we were not allowed to take pictures.
There was a gift for each of us, a small Ruby Signature, as well as a 30% discount voucher which we used in the Factory shop.
A nice detail was when I asked Mr. Wyss if they could sharpen the scissors on my EDC Swisschamp. He took the knife, checked it out, mumbled something to himself, went to the repair workshop, and came back after a couple of minutes with the brand new Swisschamp. He said, yes, the scissors were dull, and the saw was bad also, and the big blade had some scratches... here you are, this is the new knife, same as yours. My Swisschamp was an older model, but I was given the exact same knife as my old one. Old style magnifier and all.
As visits to Victorinox plant in Ibach-Schwyz are not something that happens very often, they do not have special guides for groups like ours. Mr. Wyss and Mr. Felix were extremely friendy and helpful, answering all of our questions and giving us all the informations that we could possibly ask for.
At the end. Mr Wyss even took my Certificate of my 2013 Damascus to be signed by Mr. Carl Elsener himself, and now I am waiting for the postman..... :-)
After storming the Factory Shop, we went to the Victorinox Museum in Brunnen, and left for Delemont.
In Delemont we were welcomed by Ms. Bayar who gave us into the hands of two nice ladies, professional guides for visitors. We wached the movie about the history of Victorinox, and had a tour in the factory. This tour was swift, informative and professional, but for me it lacked the warmth that I felt the day before. Maybe it was because these two ladies were professional guides, who knew their lines, and in Ibach everything was more spontaneous and easygoing. Delemont is much smaller factory, so we were done in an hour or so.
It was great experience, worth the cost of the trip and I enjoyed it a lot
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