Taylor Corp., the North Mankato, MN-based catalog holding company that won a bankruptcy court auction to acquire multititle business stationery cataloger Executive Greetings last month for $68 million, plans to close down Executive Greetings’s New Hartford, CT-based operations and consolidate with its own operations. Once the plant is closed at the end of this year, about 325 employees will be laid off.
The New Hartford plant employs marketing executives, printers, copywriters, and customer service reps. According to The Hartford Courant, Taylor, which employs some 15,000 people worldwide, has about 400 openings in its various facilities and is encouraging New Hartford workers to apply for the jobs. Only problem is that the nearest Taylor plant to the ill-fated New Hartford facility is more than 100 miles away in Amsterdam, NY.
Taylor vice president of new business development Larry Lorenzen could not be reached for comment. The Courant says that Executive Greetings’s brands, which include Drawing Board, GoPromos, U.S. Diary, and HRDirect, will continue as independent catalogs, but will be consolidated into existing facilities. According to court documents, the $86 million Executive Greetings is profitable and achieved $12 million earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) last year.
The sale of Executive Greetings to Taylor Corp. is scheduled to close April 30.