We were told last week that Canon USA laid off 60 employees from the camera division shortly after WPPI this month. We were unable to confirm the information at that time, but it appears other sources have reached out to other media outlets to confirm the layoffs.
According to Newsday, a Canon spokeswoman said that the company “is constantly reviewing business needs and organizational structures to help ensure that we are best positioned for future growth and development. At this time, we are confident that with our new organizational structure, we are well positioned for future growth and success.”
Canon USA had 1569 employees in Melville, New York according to state records. Canon USA is required to disclose local employment yearly to the state of New York and Suffolk County, as Canon received aid in building their $500mil USA headquarters.
Canon moved from Lake Success, New York to Melville, New York in 2013. According to state records, Canon USA cannot employ less than 1360 people at their headquarters or they'll be financially responsible to pay back incentives given to them by the state and county.
I wonder if this corresponds to the closure of the CPS service facility in NJ?
I like how they say it. The bigger the company is, the more words they need to say "we had too many people".
It still surprises me how some people continue to believe that their own personal opinions trump reality.
"(No pun intended)"
:D:D:D
Pretty par for the course. The way you summarized it is the executives told the communications team and said "make this as appealing as possible to our shareholders, work with legal to make it sound as pleasant as possible without it sounding misleading.
Its really unfortunate, but the number of people needed is linked to sales, and big drops in sales every year means fewer dollars to pay workers. Those point and shoot cameras are almost extinct, but were sold by the millions and it took a lot of people to support sales. The same for service, lower sales means less service is needed.
I think that those who are losing their jobs are pretty good employees and I hope they find good jobs elsewhere. The first ones out are often the lucky ones and find jobs fairly quickly. If sales keep on dropping, a second wave will lose their jobs and so on.
I've been thru the process of having to decide which employees will go. (I have also been laid off) The management meetings get pretty tense, managers feel that their employees are part of the family and fight to keep them. I retired 4 months before a big cutback, so I was spared the pain of saying goodbye to several good employees who worked in my group.
Canon is also giving a big push to mirrorless and the relative low price for the RP shows that they want mirrorless to be the product of tomorrow, so they are certainly trying to get photographers to switch over. But, they are not going to refuse your money until it becomes uneconomical to make a product due to low sales.
I don't think Canon is doomed. They are a very diversified company with healthy financials. You don't have to worry about their future survival. Markets change of course, so the products they offer will be reflected in those changes.
Canon is a business and they gotta adjust to changing times. We all do.