This year Harry and David's long time chief executive was fired and replaced by one whom is running the company from Atlanta, more than 2,000 miles away. This new executive let go of 20 top managers and replaced them with new faces. One third of the employees were let go, and raises and benefits have been cut.
Most of the companies circumstances can be explained by the economic downturn, more people are unable to afford to buy the upscale goods, and their sales have gone down nearly 25% this year. but the largest factor in the companies not performing was their increasing bad debt. A bad deal made with investors back in 2004 piled the debt onto the company, then a few months later the company piled on more debt to pay themselves back from the money they put up to buy Harry and David.
Meanwhile all this is going on the community of Southern Oregon is struggling because of the lack of jobs that Harry and David is able to provide. As one of the largest employers of Southern Oregon a lot of people depend on those jobs.
To read the full article fallow this link.
- S. Monson
wow 20 execs as the new CEO. That's crazy!
ReplyDeleteThat makes no sense they appointed a CEO from across the country. Being an Oregon based operation this is mind boggling to me. I am not even from Oregon and I have heard of this corporation before, that just shows you how large of a company they are, or how well they market their goods. I think this is an interesting article to investigate and hopefully there are some concrete solutions to propose to their management.
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