NEBS to trim down B-to-b mailer hopes to save $1.1 million After buying several complementary business supplies catalogers during the past few years – including McBee Systems, RapidForms, and Chiswick Trading – Groton, MA-based New England Business Service (NEBS) now aims to consolidate.
On Sept. 20, the nearly $500 million NEBS announced several initiatives with the goal of saving $1.1 million during the remainder of NEBS’s fiscal year 2001, which ends next July. NEBS also expects the cost cuts to save it about $3.3 million on an annualized basis thereafter.
Among the moves: – Relocating business forms marketer McBee Systems from its Parsippany, NJ, facility to the Thorofare, NJ, facility of forms cataloger RapidForms. As a combined division, called Integrated Marketing Services Group, McBee and RapidForms will support one another through McBee’s 400-person field sales staff and RapidForms’ 180-person catalog marketing group.
– Consolidating 21 sales offices across Canada to seven. Following the consolidation, 25 Canadian NEBS and McBee employees will be laid off or reassigned. “We’ll disperse the sales force so that it reports to larger regional areas,” says Timothy Althof, vice president, investor relations for NEBS.
– Closing a business forms manufacturing plant in Damascus, VA.
– Vacating a portion of leased warehouse space in Sudbury, MA, which is now occupied by NEBS packaging supplies mailer Chiswick Trading.
– Writing off a $1.7 million loss from an enterprise resource planning system software program that it had bought but decided not to implement.
“There are some employee-reduction-related savings,” Althof says, “but a lot of this is related to reducing the facility and overhead costs.” He notes that NEBS will lay off about 45 workers in all and that another 95 employees will be offered other jobs or the opportunity to relocate.
As for the consolidations, although such units as the new Integrating Marketing Services Group, workwear cataloger PremiumWear, and NEBS itself will work with one another developing catalogs or sharing field sales staff, the company is not dissolving any of its brands.