In a year from now Milwaukee-based specialty vehicle maker Rev Group Inc. will have about 200 employees in the city, up from its current headcount of 110, chief executive officer Tim Sullivan told BizTimes Milwaukee.
The company announced a $1.9 million restructuring effort on its most recent earnings call, expected to generate $20 million in annualized savings. The plan included the closure of Rev Group’s Miami office and consolidating some production operations.
While Rev Group’s overall headcount will decline, the number of Milwaukee employees will increase.
Rev Group was built over more than a decade through more than a dozen acquisitions across the specialty vehicle industry. That growth contributed to a growing corporate operation as each new business was integrated into the whole.
“The corporate organization had gotten quite large,” Sullivan said in an interview, noting Rev Group had completed four acquisitions and launched two joint ventures and a Brazilian subsidiary in the last year.
When Sullivan decided to move the company’s headquarters to Milwaukee in 2016, some employees opted not to make the move. The company closed its previous headquarters in Orlando but opened a Miami office to accommodate them.
“I thought it was time to take a good look at the entire organization,” Sullivan told analysts. “The biggest reductions were really in Miami taking some of that corporate effort out, reducing expenses in other areas. It just seemed like the right time to do it.”
He told BizTimes nearly all of the positions in Milwaukee would be new hires. One of the biggest remaining challenges is figuring out where to locate all of the new staff, but Sullivan said there is time for the company to figure that out. The company’s headquarters office is located in the Milwaukee Center building at 111 E. Kilbourn Ave. in downtown Milwaukee.
