Rossignol’s Downhill Slide
By Rocky Thompson on December 9th, 2009
Forbes magazine on “How Rossignol ended its downhill slide,” is an article about how the 100-year-old ski company is supposed to be turning it around. Basically, they’re hoping the World Cup in Val d’Isere, France and the Olympics in Canada boost sales. Like every ski shop in America, these guys were hit hard with a crappy couple low-snow seasons. So Rossignol laid-off 20% of their staff while building a $30 million new corporate headquarters in Grenoble.
“If we were deciding the priorities today it’s probably not the first decision we would take,” Cercley said, of the decision to build the new headquarters.
But the building was almost finished, and there was no going back.
“It would have been devastating to go back on the project, because there was a real expectation from the employees, who have faced so many difficulties in the last years,” he said.
Yeah, I’m sure the laid-off employees would have been really upset if they didn’t throw all their money into that new building.
*Point of order at Rossi request: The building was nearly finished when they went into layoffs.
(Maybe they could torch it for the insurance money?)
I think they’ll be selling them at Sears soon. Rossi had one of the 2 top snowboarders in the world (and the best for my money) in Jeremy Jones and they let him get away. Doesn’t say much for relevance.
Lame post, you are eluding that Rossi laid of 20% of its workforce AND THEN began building a 30 Million dollar new corporate building. Get your facts straight- the building had been in progress for two years before the layoffs started.
Rossi was probably amp’d at the opportunity / excuse of the recession to shave 20% of it’s workforce - a lot of companies are using the recession as a chance to trim the fat, what is wrong with that?