Columbia Sportswear is laying off approximately 80 people worldwide in part because mild winter weather this season is negatively impacting next year’s orders, according to a story in the Oregonian.
Low single digit sales and earnings growth projections led to the cost reductions and job cuts, the paper reported.
When Columbia released its fourth quarter earnings in February, CEO Tim Boyle indicated cuts were coming.
“… Our business is not fully insulated from the effects of this year’s unusually warm winter globally, or from the macro-economic challenges that continue to cloud the European and U.S. marketplaces. Due to those factors, we have built our preliminary outlook for 2012 around low single-digit sales growth, compared with the 19 percent and 14 percent growth that we achieved in 2010 and 2011, respectively,” he said in a statement.”
“As a disciplined response to these slower growth assumptions, we have begun implementing a number of measures designed to limit full year 2012 expense growth to a rate that is comparable to our anticipated sales growth.”
The layoffs are impacting 2% of Columbia workforce, which totals 4,100, according to the Oregonian.
