Conny and Ernst are running a small lace making factory in the
next village Rattelsdorf.
Hardly anyone knows about it and embroideries and textile industry
is not associated with the area. Their manufacturing business here
is the result of many movements within what has for a long time
been a global textile industry.
Conny's grandparents had an embroidery factory in Plauen, and after
Germany was split in two, her father decided to leave the DDR, and
came to West Germany, then got a good position at an embroidery
factory in Pakistan. Later he started work at a small embroidery in
Breitengüssbach, which is 6 km away, and started his own business
in Rattelsdorf in the 1970ies. The machines are from Plauen, and
they are the embroider's equivalent of the Heidelberger printing
machines - they run for decades, and move on from modernising/dying
factories to countries where it's still profitable to use them.
Conny and Ernst sold one machine to Turkey last year.
Ernst is from an area in Austria that is very well know for its
whitework embroideries, and his family has also been involved in
embroidery for generations.
In Rattelsdorf they keep the machines running and produce mainly
curtains for what Conny calls the "countryhouse-style" niche, and
they're distributing to small shops which can't get small runs from
the wholesalers. And as Conny says, it's their lifeblood that keeps
it running.