Avon layoffs eliminate 400 jobs, shut down Ireland operations

Avon layoffs will include more than 400 jobs cuts worldwide, just three months after the 1,500 layoffs in December, when Avon pulled out of Vietnam and South Korea.

|
Bebeto Matthews / AP / File
Actress and advocate Salma Hayek speaks at the second annual Avon Communications Awards: Speaking Out About Violence Against Women luncheon, March 7, New York. It is unclear what Avon's latest round of downsizing and layoffs means for programs like this one.

Avon is eliminating more than 400 positions and abandoning or restructuring smaller or underperforming businesses in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, including an exit from Ireland.

The company said Monday that the job cuts, which equate to about 1 percent of Avon's 39,100 employees, will occur across all regions and segments. It is part of a turnaround plan under CEO Sheri McCoy, with the goal of achieving mid-single digit percentage revenue growth and $400 million in cost savings by 2016.

Avon expects to complete almost all the cuts before year's end.

The New York company will take charges of around $35 million to $40 million before taxes and expects annualized savings of between $45 million and $50 million.

The jobs cuts come on top of the 1,500 positions trimmed in December, when the company announced that it was exiting Vietnam and South Korea.

The direct seller of beauty products has been struggling to turn around its business at home and in emerging markets. It has also wrestled with a bribery probe in China that began in 2008 and has since spread to other countries.

In its most recent quarter, Avon Products Inc. posted a wider fourth-quarter loss as it marked down the value of its Silpada jewelry business and restructured. It was still better than Wall Street had expected, however, and McCoy, who took over Avon one year ago, said there were signs that business was stabilizing.

Avon Products shares rose 35 cents, or 1.7 percent, to close at $20.61 Monday.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Avon layoffs eliminate 400 jobs, shut down Ireland operations
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0408/Avon-layoffs-eliminate-400-jobs-shut-down-Ireland-operations
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe