BOTHELL — Eddie Bauer’s financially troubled parent company will close its customer service center in south Snohomish County, laying off 365 people by early July.
The closure of the Bothell call center was one of several cost-cutting actions announced Monday by The Spiegel Group, which has been under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since March.
"We’re in the process of reorganization, and we need to reduce our costs and streamline our facilities," said Debbie Koopman, a Spiegel spokeswoman.
The center is scheduled to close July 6. Laid-off employees will receive severance and benefits, Koopman said.
The company also is cutting 180 jobs at Eddie Bauer’s headquarters in Redmond and laying off 90 employees from its computer systems support staff in the Chicago area.
Last week, Spiegel said it would close 60 Eddie Bauer stores in North America, including the one at Everett Mall, in the coming weeks. Another 21 Spiegel and Newport News outlets also are shutting.
Koopman said the Bothell operation, which previously laid off 200 people in February, had the highest costs among the company’s five call centers. She added that customer orders handled by the Bothell center would be picked up by the other facilities in South Dakota, Virginia and Canada.
The local call center, which takes catalog orders for Eddie Bauer and other Spiegel-owned businesses, has employed more than 1,000 people at times since it opened in 1997.
Located in a two-story, 65,000-square-foot building at 3700 Monte Villa Parkway in Bothell, it was named one of the nation’s "call centers of the year" for 2000 by Call Center Magazine. Managers boasted about the building’s high ceilings and big windows that made for a more comfortable environment for employees.
After Monday’s announcement, employees outside the building said they’d been told not to comment to the media.
"I can’t say anything. I wouldn’t want to lose my severance," one employee said as she left the building.
A manager at the center referred all questions about the layoff announcement to The Spiegel Group’s headquarters in Downers Grove, Ill.
Spiegel’s financial woes started several years ago. Eddie Bauer, which got its start in Seattle more than 80 years ago, has seen declining sales, along with Spiegel’s other catalog divisions. The company also was hurt by mounting debt in its credit card program.
Scott Smallman, managing director of investments for US Bancorp Piper Jaffray in Seattle, said the company made its problems worse by not acting in a timely basis to correct them.
One of the problems, he said, was Spiegel’s attempt to make Eddie Bauer a more mainstream brand, making it harder to distinguish itself from other retailers.
Maine-based L.L. Bean has expressed interest in acquiring Eddie Bauer to reduce Bean’s reliance on catalog-only sales. Many analysts like the idea, as both Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean could capitalize on their similar reputations as sellers of good quality, outdoors-oriented clothing.
While combining might be a good fit for the two companies, Spiegel said it is not in talks to sell the best-known part of the business.
"If Spiegel sold the Eddie Bauer brand, it’s hard to know what they’d have left to rebuild their business around," Smallman said.
In separate announcements on Monday, Spiegel said it has received $400 million in special financing provided by several banks. The company also announced the launch of a new credit card program for Eddie Bauer and its other retail division.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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