The Coleman Co. is outsourcing most of its U.S. consumer service operations, which are now conducted in-house at the companys facilities in Wichita, KS, according to a report in the Wichita Business Journal.
Coleman will use an unidentified third-party provider already used by parent company Jarden Corp. which owns dozens of consumer product brands. Coleman is part of Jardens Outdoor Solutions segment, which also owns the Abu Garcia, Aero, Berkley, Campingaz, Coleman, ExOfficio, Fenwick, Gulp!, K2, Marker, Marmot, Mitchell, Penn, Rawlings, Shakespeare, Stearns, Stren, Trilene, Völkl and Zoot brands.
Wichita, which housed 800 of Colemans 3,000 U.S. employees prior to the outsourcing decision, will continue to be home to more Coleman employees than any other U.S. location, the newspaper reported.
Coleman put Wichitas civic leaders on edge in October 2011 after its new CEO Robert Marcovitch, an avid skier, said he was moving 25 key executives to a new leadership center near Denver to be closer to the talent pool for outdoor products. That group temporarily reoccupied a 36,500-square-foot log cabin structure built to house Colemans headquarters from 1995 to 1997, before another Coleman CEO moved it back to Wichita.
The new leadership center has since moved to a new space Coleman built in Golden west of Denver. As of Friday Jarden Corp. listed 36 open positions at Coleman, including 11 in Wichita and five in Golden, where is was looking to hire two creative design specialists, a graphic designer, a senior financial analysts and a strategic account manager for the grocery, drug and dollar store accounts.
