Steven J Heyer

Harry & David plans thousands of hires

Interim Chief Executive Officer Kay Hong, who succeeded Steve Heyer as the company's leader in February, issued a memo this week stating the company plans to hire 6,000 workers beginning in May and into the holiday season, including 1,400 for its Medford call center and another 1,000 at its Hebron, Ohio, call center.

While Hong's memo did not specify where the other 3,600 jobs would be, the majority likely would be in the Medford area, principally in orchards and warehouse operations.

Harry & David files for bankruptcy | OregonLive.com

I'm sorry to hear the company is in trouble, they create a lot of jobs in Medford. Times are tough enough without losing this major employer in the area. H&D produce high quality products, unfortunately most are out of my reach because of price. Maybe they should expand their product line to include more reasonably priced items that would sell year around to a wide customer base instead of focusing on a high end product with a small customer base and primarily focused on the holiday season.

There's no joking around with this company. It employs a lot of folks in the Rogue Valley and elsewherre. I believe Wasserstein & Co bot it with bank lines then turned around and saddled the company with bonds to reimburse themselves. When recession came there was too lil equity and too much debt. Last time I looked the company was sending Wasserstein about a million a year in management fees. Some fee! sSme management! As to quality and price of the company's products that's in the mind of the buyer. I wish the company the best.

I agree with being overpriced. I used to order from them years ago. And they got nasty with me when I had a past due balance. I paid it off and I noticed they stopped sending me catalogs after that. I guess they closed my acct afterwards. I use Swiss colony now for gifts during holidays ..they have way more selection and price is much better. I bet I've spent $600-700 at Swiss since being dumped by H & D...too bad so sad.

I sure remember clearly reading about H and D as another " internet success story " and reading how American companies thrive and such...

Seems to me Wasserstein and Co are the ones who made out like bandits, eh ? Ya gotta hand it to those Wall St. fat cats, their road to success is paved with " favors " given out to the US Congress, and every bit of it was money well spent !

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