Harry & David hangs up on Eugene center
10-Dec-2010The Medford company has employed more than 1,000 people here during the holidays for more than 20 years
By Sherri Buri McDonald
The Register-Guard
December 10, 2010
A longtime Eugene winter holiday tradition has ended.
For the first time in two decades, Medford fresh fruit and gourmet food purveyor Harry & David is not operating its seasonal call center in Eugene, spokeswoman Rhonda Klug said.
The center, which first opened in 1988, consistently provided work for 1,000-plus local residents October through January. Many of the workers, who included seniors, college students and others trying to earn extra cash for the holidays, returned year after year, enjoying the camaraderie, free samples and employee discount.
The company said in a written statement that as part of a broader effort to upgrade its call center technologies, it decided in July not to reopen the Eugene center.
“The new platform allows for better staffing capabilities and improved efficiencies,” the statement said. The company also said that as it implemented the new system, it did not want to spread its IT professionals too thin by having them oversee too many call centers.
Klug did not respond to further questions from The Register-Guard.
For years, the company hired about 1,000 seasonal workers in Eugene and about 800 in Hebron, Ohio, to help customer service representatives at its Medford call center handle the flood of holiday orders.
In July, the Newark Ohio Advocate reported that Harry & David had decided to outsource the Hebron work to an unnamed third-party vendor this winter.
Harry & David Chief Financial Officer Ed Dunlap told the Medford Mail Tribune in July that the outside vendor could achieve greater economies of scale than Harry & David. He said Harry & David was outsourcing a number of functions to cut costs.
Harry & David, which is controlled by the New York investment firm of Wasser stein Partners, is racking up losses because of shrinking sales and heavy interest payments on its debt.
The company reported a loss of $39.2 million on sales of $427 million in the fiscal year ended June 26.
The loss of seasonal jobs in Eugene matters greatly to the employees who had them, but it doesn’t dramatically change Lane County’s employment picture.
“It’s obviously unfortunate whenever you have an employer leave,” said Jack Roberts, executive director of Lane Metro Partnership, a local economic development agency. But it doesn’t have a major impact on permanent employment here, he said.
The local call center industry employs an estimated 1,500 workers, including 461 employees at Royal Caribbean’s call center in Springfield and about 330 employees at Enterprise Rent-a-Car’s center.
Royal Caribbean had been looking to lease out half of the main floor of its Springfield facility, but it recently took that off the market because it is staffing its entire facility, facilities manager Cheryl Louderback said.
Enterprise occupies the ground floor of the former Bon Marché building at 175 W. Broadway in downtown Eugene, where Harry & David had leased 25,000 square feet on the second floor.
Harry & David moved to that space in 2006, when, for security reasons following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Qwest no longer subleased space at its sensitive facilities. For years, Harry & David had leased the fourth floor of the Qwest building at 10th Avenue and Oak Street in downtown Eugene.
Tim Campbell, broker for the former Bon Marché building, said Harry & David did not renew when its five-year lease there expired this spring. He and Roberts said they understood that the work would be handled primarily by Harry & David’s Medford call center.
Harry & David’s former space joins others on the market that were previously occupied by call centers, Roberts said.
Interest in Eugene by call centers is picking up, he said.
Eugene is attractive to call centers, said King White, president of Site Selection Group LLC in Dallas.
“Between the buildings being there and being on the West Coast in the Pacific time zone, and being a college town … I think you’re going to get people coming to town.”