Avon facility in Pasadena, which employs more than 170 workers, to close in 2014
Still, the closure wasn’t a total surprise, he said.
“They still did a lot of business there, but we understood their business model in the age of the Internet was perhaps a growing challenge,” Duyshart said. “We kind of realized maybe a couple years ago that in the next five years [they might close the facility], it just came a little earlier than we expected.”
Starting in 2014, Vargas said the company would start to transition orders out of the facility, which ships to all of Avon’s independent sales contractors on the west coast, in advance of the full closure.
The Pasadena facility opened in 1946, making it Avon’s oldest distribution center in the United States.
Vargas said the closure was part of a company-wide cost savings initiative that also includes the closure of a distribution center in Atlanta.
Some of the workers might be able to obtain other positions in the company’s remaining operations, although Vargas said that isn’t a “broad option.”
Vargas said she didn’t know how many sales representatives used the Pasadena facility, or how many orders it processed.
“Our focus is on streamlining our distribution efficiencies and right-sizing our supply chain,” she said.
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