Breaking: Footlocker/Eastbay to lay off more than 200 workers
Breaking: Footlocker/Eastbay to lay off more than 200 workers
This comes on the closing of the Eastbay retail outlet earlier this month
I don’t intend for this site to be about breaking news generally. But I will make exceptions for highly impactful news — and Eastbay’s layoffs are a pretty big deal.
Eastbay/Footlocker plans to lay off 210 of its workers starting next year. That comes via a letter sent by Eastbay/Footlocker general counsel to the Department of Workforce Development and the city’s Mayor, Katie Rosenberg, who is also a former Footlocker.com employee.
Footlocker intends to start consolidating its distribution starting next year, according to the letter. And thus will be laying off employees.
The company will first layoff 162 employees on Jan. 31, and the company will layoff another 48 on or before April 30.
The layoffs will mean the entire facility will be closed.
State laws require companies making layoffs of significant size to notify the Department of Workforce Development in advance. DWD often provides resources such as job training to workers affected by layoffs.
The news comes as the company began moving staff to Florida prior to the pandemic, and had already started shrinking its workforce in recent years. The company also quietly closed its retail outlet earlier this month.
Game One, a competitor, has been hiring several of Eastbay/Footlocker.com’s talent away from the flailing company. Many of them work remotely and the company has seemed to leverage Eastbay’s outgoing talent pool as the company seeks further growth.
Eastbay was a large athletic clothing company aimed at the youth sports team apparel market, and had become a major employer in the Wausau area. But that changed as the company started moving its employees and operations to Florida.
Thanks for reading The Wausonian. This story is free because of its significance, but if you want to support data-focused, experienced local journalism, subscribe for free to the weekly news/sports/entertainment digest or consider going paid and join the dozens of subscribers who get all the deeply reported journalism The Wausonain offers, ad-free.