Layoffs: The Last Resort of Incompetent Management
Agreed.
Now look at the culture of the new owners.
Layoffs in the core business?
Not during the crisis in the early 1990s when Weber was struggling (begging) to get the banks to provide financing for the next day's payroll, not after 9/11 and not during the current crisis.
The operative phrase is "competent management".
Which is what bmi hasn't had for a long time, if ever.
There have been good managers (Austin Reed, for one), but with SMB turning planning on its head at a whim, constrained in their ability to manage effectively