Baby clothing retailer to lay off 100 Shelton staff
Children”™s clothing retailer Carter”™s Inc., whose brands include an eponymous line and OshKosh B”™gosh, will lay off about 100 of its Shelton employees as part of a consolidation of the Atlanta company”™s corporate and administrative departments.
Carter”™s plans to close its 1 Waterview Drive facility, with layoffs commencing June 30, the company said in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act filing with the Connecticut Department of Labor.
The company”™s Shelton team comprises primarily back-office staff in a range of departments, from accounts payable to human resources to accounting. The office closing comes as Carter”™s is consolidating the bulk of its corporate and management team in Atlanta, where it is building a new headquarters.
Carter”™s representatives were reached, but were unable to respond with any additional comment or information on the closing prior to press deadline.
Michael D. Casey, chairman and CEO, said on an April 25 earnings conference call that most of the company”™s key employees on its retail and finance teams who had been based in Connecticut were now working in Atlanta.
Carter”™s incurred $8 million of charges in the first quarter of 2013 related to its office consolidation initiative, CFO Richard F. Westenberger said on the earnings call.
“We expect that we”™ll have additional charges in the upcoming quarters as this initiative moves forward,” Westenberger said.
He said the expected cost of Carter”™s office consolidation has increased “by several million dollars” and that the total costs are now projected to be between $41 million and $45 million.
“Additional costs are due to several very positive factors, including successfully recruiting more of our Connecticut-based employees to Atlanta than we had originally planned, and we”™re very happy about that,” Westenberger said.
It was not clear how many employees the company had in Connecticut prior to the consolidation process, nor was it known how many had their jobs moved to Atlanta.
The approximately 100 layoffs from the company”™s 1 Waterview Drive facility will take about two weeks to complete.
Westenberger reinforced the company”™s upbeat growth sentiments on the April 25 conference call.
“We continue to feel very good about the outlook for the balance of 2013,” he said. “For the full year … we continue to forecast growth in net sales in the range of 8 percent to 10 percent and growth in adjusted earnings per share of approximately 15 percent. We expect capital expenditures of approximately $200 million for the year.”
[Editor’s note: An initial version of this article was published May 7.]