Onecoast adds new vendors to national division
Economic conditions lead to layoffs, halt to plans for second national division
-- Home Accents Today, 12/9/2008 7:42:00 AM
Sales and marketing agency Onecoast has announced it will expand its representation with the sales agency’s home & lifestyle group. Scentations and Home Source International are expanding their relationships to cover 50 and 40 states, respectively; PTMD Collection is working with Onecoast in 47 states.
“We find we are most effective in selling and marketing product lines when we represent them across big portions of the country,” said Ted Teele, CEO of Onecoast. “We are very excited to bring these leading vendors to even more of our retailers around the country.”
Scentations' and PTMD’s expansion was effective Dec. 1; Home Source's move is effective Jan. 1, 2009.
OneCoast Home & Lifestyle will continue to be lead by Nancy Lee, senior vice president.
In other news, Onecoast announced that it has halted its plans to add a second national division, due to the difficult economic climate, and eliminated some positions as a result.
“Given this very difficult retail market, we have made the following change in our plans -- our national gift and lifestyle team will serve retailers with one sales group as opposed to two,” Teele said. “The economic realities just did not make this the right time to launch a second team. Having one team will better position our sales reps to earn a good living in 2009.
“Sadly, as part of the decision to field one national gift and lifestyle team, we had to eliminate a number of sales and other company positions. We are assisting our displaced team members in finding new work.”
The company would not release the number of people laid off. Last week, several postings were made to the Home Accents Today Web site regarding the layoffs. Home Accents Today learned that two of the postings were fraudulent, using the names John Keiser, a senior VP at Onecoast, and a prominent retailer. As a policy, Home Accents Today removes any postings that are libelous, profane or are fraudulent in their representations.
“As you all know, these are difficult economic times and our independent retailer customer base has been significantly affected,” Teele said. “We care deeply about our sales team, and are always focused on how they can earn a good living. The current economic situation made this challenging with our previous divisional structure. Consequently, we made the tough decision to consolidate our gift business into one strong 10 line division for ND One. This sadly resulted in some employee turnover. We have worked hard to treat people with dignity during the transition.”
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Onecoast forms second National Sales Division
Oct 1, 2008 -
One Coast adds six vendors to national division
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