A Brionnais name since 1879, by its own account.

Plassard is a French knitting-yarn brand from the Brionnais, the rolling cattle country in the south of Saône-et-Loire, in Burgundy. Its website heads its history page “Laines à tricoter depuis 1879” — knitting wools since 1879 — and says that already at that time Plassard, “a French brand established in Saône-et-Loire,” was creating knitting yarns and original patterns. The page names no founder, and we give 1879 as the company’s own date. The regional daily Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire repeated it in November 2022, describing “the Brionnais firm Les Laines Plassard” as created 143 years earlier.

For most of its modern life the business was associated with Varennes-sous-Dun, a village in the Brionnais hills. A 2018 profile in the business weekly Ecodocs, whose headline the company lists among its press coverage, still called it “la filature Plassard de Varennes-sous-Dun” — the Plassard spinning mill — and the same feature listed a shop at Varennes among the company’s five.

The brand signs itself “La Belle Laine” — the beautiful wool — and says the line grew out of a set of company values it lists as trust, respect, authenticity, conviviality, transparency and responsibility. Its website describes a team of stylists producing patterns “as close as possible to the trends,” and an image of “femininity, simplicity and refinement” that it says goes back to its beginnings.

A takeover, a move and a turn to digital.

The company today trades as Plassard S.A.S, and its website names Grégory Fournier as president. In a post dated March 2026 the company said he had bought Les Laines Plassard “nearly ten years ago,” which places the takeover around 2016; we found no dated public record of the transaction and give that as the company’s account.

The figures from that period come from the press. Ecodocs reported in June 2018 that Plassard had 20 employees, five sales representatives covering France, five shops — at Varennes-sous-Dun, Champagne-au-Mont-d’Or near Lyon, Saint-Égrève near Grenoble, Cournon-d’Auvergne and Vichy — exports to ten countries, and turnover of €3.2 million in 2017. Its headline was about the move online: the mill, it said, was weaving its web on digital. In November 2018 Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire reported that Plassard was launching kits for beginners, a line the website still sells alongside patterns, needles and books.

In spring 2022 the business left Varennes-sous-Dun. Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire reported in November 2022 that Plassard had settled at Chauffailles, a small textile town nearby, in April, leaving “its historic premises”; a headline the company lists from the same paper gives the moving date as 11 May. Either way, the first factory sales at the new site took place that autumn, and the newspaper reported that 80 percent of Plassard’s sales fall between July and February, the season when people knit most.

The shop network has kept its size. The website’s team page lists shops at Chauffailles, Champagne-au-Mont-d’Or, Vichy, Cournon-d’Auvergne and Saint-Égrève, along with sales staff for different regions of France, an art director and an in-house graphic designer — a sign that the brand’s look is made inside the company.

The website also runs a knitting blog, “Plass’ au tricot,” and an “SOS Tricot” help service for knitters stuck on a pattern, which it advertises alongside the shops.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all sell yarn for hand knitting and crochet, and they come from seven countries: Plassard from France, Opal from Germany, Holst Garn from Denmark, Rauma from Norway, Daruma from Japan, Lana Gatto from Italy and Red Heart from the United States. They sit at very different points on the map of the yarn trade, from small regional names to brands sold by the million.

At one end are regional spinners and family firms, whose names are tied to a town, a valley or a national wool tradition, and whose colour cards often grew out of what local mills could make. At the other end are mass-market brands, built for craft chains and online shops, where a yarn name can pass from one corporate owner to another while the label on the ball stays the same. Between them sit companies that design yarn and its colours but rely on others to spin it.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded it, who owns it now and where its yarn is made — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

French brand, mostly Italian yarn.

Where the yarn is made is the point to read carefully. In the same November 2022 article, Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire reported that “Les laines Plassard sont principalement fabriquées en Italie” — Plassard’s yarns are mainly made in Italy. The president told the paper that of the brand’s 60 yarn qualities, 20 were 100 percent natural, and that of those, three were organic, two recycled and one made in France; the aim was ten yarns meeting at least one of those criteria by 2025. We have not seen whether that target was met.

The newspaper also reported that Plassard had joined the Collectif Tricolor, an inter-professional association working to rebuild a French wool chain, and would be a pilot for a traceability project — a QR code on each ball showing where the wool came from, the farmer and the distance it had travelled. The project was, the paper said, at an early stage. The website now groups a small range as “Les fils Français,” saying it works “closely with local spinning mills” for those yarns. It also says it chooses suppliers so that each stage of manufacture respects ethical rules and animal welfare; we give that as its claim.

We found no published brand guidelines, logo history or official colours. The palette here — a deep wine, a heather rose and a wool cream — is our own interpretation of a brand rooted in Burgundy.

For a design guide, Plassard shows how an old regional name can be carried by a brand that designs in France and sources across borders. Compare Bergère de France, the spinning mill at Bar-le-Duc, and Phildar, the knitting-yarn name from Roubaix. For this guide we use wine, rose and cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Plassard’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.