LEXINGTON, S.C. and LÉVIS, Quebec (BRAIN) — Hawley-Lambert has laid off 13 staff from its Lexington offices as it continues to integrate both companies and finalizes the transition of back-end functions to Lévis, Quebec. Sylvain Caya, president of Hawley-Lambert, said multiple reasons led to the cuts including restructuring, softness in the market and in some cases, performance issues.
Of the positions that were eliminated about one third were transitioned to Canada, including finance, accounting and payables; the other two thirds were due to softness in the market and performance driven, Caya said.
"As a company, something that has not been communicated over the past 18 months is that right now, most of the back-end functions are in Canada, such as finance, and IT, and this is the final step for transitioning some functions," he said.
"As part of this restructuring we've got an aggressive growth plan," he added. "Some of Pat McGinnis' (recently named vice president of commercial) first priorities will be to leverage the new SBS acquisition and the launch of Blackburn, which we signed as the U.S. fulfillment distributor two weeks ago, as well as leveraging the new Northeastern distribution center in Pennsylvania. We have a lot of big projects going on and Pat in his new role, which he starts June 20, will be there to leverage those projects."
Caya said so far this year, sales have been strong in Canada, but soft in the U.S. since the beginning of the year.
"We've seen the results of that recently with SRAM and Specialized laying off people," he said. "I would say we're all in the same boat. When we talk to other vendors, it's been a soft market so far this year."
Hawley-Lambert employs 225 people in North America including its sales force.
