SnowNews

Salomon Announces Nearly 400 Job Cuts

Salomon, the French sports good manufacturer, announced today that it plans to cut 378 jobs across its two factories in the Haute-Savoie. Although a lot of manufacturing has already been outsourced to far east, especially China the company still employs 1500 staff on two sites at Rumilly and at Metz-Tessy close to Annecy.

The job cuts will effect 101 office and executive staff with the rest coming from the manufacturing side. Salomon was sold by Adidas to the Finish group Amer Sports. Amer also own the Austrian manufacturer Atomic.

An industry source explained to SnowNews that there is considerable overlap between the two companies’ product lines which will have to be rationalized. He speculated that Atomic would focus on skis where is has built a very good reputation through the successes by the Austrian race team and that Salomon looked set to focus on boots.

Earlier in the year Salomon’s French rivals, Rossignol were bought by the American group Quiksilver. One thing seems certain, more of the manufacturing of budget skis will move to eastern Europe and the far east at the expense of local jobs.

posted by davidof @ 1:29 PM