Nation’s Alcoholics, Boozers and Bums Express Outrage at Loss by Moaning Incoherently and Wetting Themselves.
Maker of undercounter refrigerators and icemakers to consolidate operations with parent Northland’s production in Michigan. 140 Marvel-ous jobs were lost, and one imagines that someone is trying to contact the absent 15% of the workforce who may not learn of the closing for several weeks.
Marvel’s Saga of Information Ineptitude Continues:
- AGA / Northland threaten to close the Marvel plant, the threat gets into the public domain.
- Information about Marvel quality problems and high absenteeism gets into the public domain damaging the brand
- The Northland plant is chucked under the bus and reported to also be expendable. This gets into the public domain.
- After running state and local officials through a ringer putting together $millions in incentives to save the Richmond, IN plant, local officials are shocked to learn 2nd hand of the decision to close the plant. Officials were embarrassed and to cover their flank were only too happy dish dirt on the record to the local newspaper the Palladium Item with:
- "Here we are ready to put up $2.074 million and we can’t even get a simple phone call back from them to tell us they are leaving."
- "With the amount of work, time and effort that many people put in, it would have been nice to let us know"
- "This was a first — even Target let me know when they were leaving."
Are you people certifiably insane? Is this how you protect a brand you paid millions to acquire? Is it amateur night over there? Have you forgotten that it’s a recession, and you don’t make things people "need"? This is not rocket science.
This should have been a short story about a "lamentable factory closing", of "moral support for the workers, worker retraining and the officials and people of the community of Richmond", immediately flowing into "Marvel’s choice to keep jobs in America", and then of "plant modernization and production efficiencies in Michigan", ending finally with "higher competitiveness and better products for the consumer". This could have been a feel good story. Instead you have made the not so obvious choice of turning it all into a bloody train wreck, and the blood is your own. I feel like I need a shower.
Stockholders should be asking questions.
Northland one must remember, is the refrigerator manufacturer which has yet to figure out how to meet DOE energy requirements if not for a seemingly tailor-made loophole, (since fridge box and refrigeration mechanism ship in two boxes DOE regs don’t apply, we sh** you not…See Dull Edge of Cold April 2004)
See April 2008 "Big, BIG Problems Reported at AGA / Marvel / Northland" below for first story.
Reader Comment May 2:
AGA paid 21 million for Marvel. Hired Gordon Stauffer as President (he was already Northland’s President) who ran the company along with AGA for three years. Marvel declined from a very profitable company producing high quality products to one which is losing money and producing lower quality products. After a series of bad management decisions and a steady turnover of middle management employees, top management proclaimed the financial loses and poor quality are due to the lack of efforts by the rank and file factory workers and their local union. As you know, Northland is the company that produces the NKA brand of larger built in refrigerators that cannot meet the energy standards-now or ever.
Marvel Dealer Letter May 5: Click Here