Everyone who hasn't imbibed the hopium knows that the economy is not a (ahem) pretty picture right now. This of course (ahem) poses a lot of problems for companies which produce nonessential products, especially if the target market is lower middle income earners. Here is Stltoday.com with the latest (ahem) portrait of such distress:
CPI Corp. plans to close 346 of its PictureMe portrait studios located in Wal-Marts across the country next month.We'll keep our eyes on this (ahem) developing story as I'm sure this will not be the last time this company is forced to close locations.
The St. Louis-based operator of portrait studios announced the planned closures in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today. In the filing, CPI said employees at the affected studios were notified today. The stores, which it described as "underperforming," will close by March 23. Company officials did not answer calls requesting comment about the closures.
After the stores close next month, CPI will continue to operate 2,712 portrait studios located at Wal-Mart, Sears and Babies "R" Us stores nationwide. CPI said in the filing that it expects exit costs to total between $2.8 million and $3.1 million related to the store closures.
Okay, I'll stop with the puns now.
Bonus: "I've been living so long with my pictures of you...that I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel"
I got layoff on feb 28th and i don't have any performance issue in Ericsson my IPM is all good and i just did Ericsson Certification, Also i was the only person in my group got lay off. In my group there is one person who is on performance improvement plan for past 40 days and he is still at work. So this is bullshit i was part of RNAM group. They are not only taking food of our table, they are also demoralizing employee by saying bottom 10% actually they don't have any answer i want why they are doing what they are doing its bunch of bull.how come some one on PIP is working while the other one is layed off on the name of bottom 10%.Ericsson is a criminal.I was the only one sent home on 29th of feb wednesday not only that i work for ericsson for 4yrs 6 month. There is only employee who was hired after me and he is still there.This is so unbelievable that person on improvement plan is at work..I need to sue Ericsson.My name is Amer Mushtaq my e-mail id is amer.mushtaq@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteMaybe if you had a grasp of the english language, you might be able to keep a job. You would not have lasted a day with your lack of intelligence in my studio.
DeleteI got layoff on feb 29th and i don't have any performance issue in Ericsson my IPM is all good and i just did Ericsson Certification, Also i was the only person in my group got lay off. In my group there is one person who is on performance improvement plan for past 40 days and he is still at work. So this is bullshit i was part of RNAM group. They are not only taking food of our table, they are also demoralizing employee by saying bottom 10% actually they don't have any answer i want why they are doing what they are doing its bunch of bull.how come some one on PIP is working while the other one is layed off on the name of bottom 10%.Ericsson is a criminal.I was the only one sent home on 29th of feb wednesday not only that i work for ericsson for 4yrs 6 month. There is only employee who was hired after me and he is still there.This is so unbelievable that person on improvement plan is at work..I need to sue Ericsson.My name is Amer Mushtaq my e-mail id is amer.mushtaq@gmail.com
ReplyDeletei was laid off by this company on march 23rd, they closed the monroe studio in monroe ny i was a facilities manager there and it was ridiculous we werent even told why they were shutting us down, we couldnt tell the customers anything...this company doesnt care about anything but its money its horrible
ReplyDeletedoesn't care about anything bit it's money. bingo. also low morale. high turnover. leads to being selfish. making it more difficult to earn bonus. not giving advance notice of the lay-offs in specific details. on and on. this company has had so many complaints from the studio managers in regards to the customer service survey which they changed AFTER letting people go for not meeting the standard that should have changed sooner. on and on.
ReplyDeleteI am a current employee of CPI and i feel it is unfair! they are completely keeping us in the dark all we see other store closures and lay offs and wait for our store to be next. The lab has not been sending out pictures so everyday I have to some how try to explain to the customer why their pictures are not there on the return date they were given. I cant just say my company is going belly up so they didnt send me your pictures. Just frustrating since I am the face of the company that people see and all us studio associates and managers and even dm have to deal with grumpy unsatisfied customers when we honestly dont know what is truly going on.
ReplyDeleteThe company closed the North Carolina Lab. They only have one manufacturing facility now. This might explain why you are not getting customer prints on a consistent basis. The company is in hot water with a number of pending law suits. One for insider trading and others that include not paying hourly associates for time they actually worked. This law suit originated in the studios but I know for certain that the practice of deducting actual time worked occurred in the manufacturing facilities. The company implemented EAC as soon as they were hit with the law suit from the studio associates. This program tracked associates time clock punches among other things. They wanted to prove that they did not alter time cards. These issue alone are not the reason for the companies continuing downward spiral. The same folks that lack ethical integrity are the ones making bad decisions for the company. The company has already begun to let IT support go. This to me is an indication that the end id very near. If you are currently employed by this company you will want to up date your resume pronto!
ReplyDeleteI think all the locations closed today sent to employees through txt messages how proffesional
ReplyDeleteNow everyone has been "screwed" by the company, but I bet the top management got their severance payments.
ReplyDeleteCPI Corp. has closed all Picture Me Portrait studios as well as Sears Portrait studios as of last evening (4/3/13). No prior notice until store managers received text messages or phone calls from their district managers late evening. Picture Me and Sears Portrait sites both have brief statements confirming the closure of their sites. Sounds like the Canadian side of CPI's ventures will continue but not the US stores.
ReplyDeletePissed off customer I went to pick up my sons Easter pics and found out they closed!! So there went those memories and Walmart says there not affiliated with the portrait studio if so why are they giving refunds it doesn't make sense. I feel bad for the employees and customers!!!I wish we had someone to sue but nobody answers the 800 numbers and websites are shut down!! I guess we were the April fools!!!
ReplyDelete