Company has added 48 employees since start of year, up to about 300 total
Fueled by a 20 percent year-to-date sales growth in its own stores, Allen Edmonds has hired 48 employees since the beginning of 2010, said Paul Grangaard, chief executive officer of the Port Washington based company. The company’s wholesale sales have risen by about 13 percent in the same time frame.
Forty-one of the company’s hires have been in the company’s manufacturing operations. In late 2008, Allen Edmonds laid off about 40 workers. Because many of those employees found other jobs since the layoffs, Grangaard said many of the 41 employees added to the manufacturing operations are new to Allen Edmonds.
“Many of (those employees) have experience with other manufacturing companies in the northern Milwaukee area and some of them were out of work for a while,” Grangaard said. “We’re really proud… it feels great to give (those people) a job. And they’ve been working overtime, so they’re able to start putting their ends closer together again.”
In addition to the 41 new employees in manufacturing, Allen Edmonds is currently using about 20 temporary workers.
“We want to make sure this recovery is here to stay,” Grangaard said. “There’s nothing I hate worse than laying off (employees). We’re using temporary help and overtime to close the gap until we feel more confident about the (economic) recovery.”
