At a town hall meeting yesterday, Baker & Taylor owner and CEO Aman Kochar said that while he had hoped to find another way forward for the company after its acquisition deal with ReaderLink was called off, he now does not see a sustainable path to keep the library wholesaler in business.
As a result, B&T let go about 520 employees yesterday and plans to wind down the business by January. Employees who were laid off had their severance plans canceled as well. B&T had undergone some layoffs earlier this year, but recently had as many as 1,500 full-time and part-time employees.
A story in the Shaw Local, a business journal for Northern Illinois, said that of the 318 employees in the B&T distribution center in Momence, IL., 253 were let go on October 6. Sixty-two employees will remain until December 22 and a “post–wind down” group of three employees will be let go on Jan. 3.
How do you fuck this up when you have such a huge customer base?
My local library got half their books from Baker & Taylor, not anymore