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Color Arts closes; 230 left jobless
By Jeff Wilford
RACINE - The announcement, to Color Arts' employees at 3 p.m. Friday, was sudden and swift.
Management had been unable to save the company. They were all fired. Immediately.
Just like that, 57 years of business for the nationally known screen printing company came to a halt.
The announcement, and the sudden end to their jobs, left many employees stunned
"There were a fair amount of tears, and there was definitely some anger," said Wendy Bishop, a Color Arts employee, of the reaction to the announcement. "In fact, one employee was crying and she kept saying, `How can Color Arts be out of money?' She kept saying that. `How can we be out of money?' " Bishop, 57, was one of 230 employees who suddenly found themselves out of work Friday. She had been the receptionist at Color Arts for almost 16 years.
Mark Bollmeier, 49 - who had been the vice president of sales and marketing before being moved to a national accounts manager a year ago - blamed mismanagement for the company's demise.
"We would have worked for nothing for two, three, four weeks to get the company back on its feet," added Lance Warren, superintendent of the third shift who worked for 15 years at Color Arts.
Yolanda Guzman, who worked for 10 years in Color Arts' finishing Department said: "It hurts."
Nancy Forbes-Castaneda, 41, was out of a job just eight months after coming to Color Arts.
"Would you believe I took a pay cut to go over there?" Forbes-Castaneda said. "Because I believed I was going into something that had a lot of opportunity."
Employees said they had been nervous for weeks about Color Arts' future. The bank took over the company, a crisis management consultant was brought in, lots of closed doors in the building, lots of secret meetings, and rumors. Rumors that some people were looking for other jobs, rumors that vendors were being paid slowly or not at all, rumors of reducing the staff or eliminating their 401(k) plans.
A couple of days ago, employees - even the receptionist - were told to stop answering their phones. The flood of calls from people wanting to know what was going on with the company was too great and employees couldn't tell them, employees said. Instead, those calls were switched into an automated answering
system.
Feeding these rumors, and adding to employees' worries, was that Color Arts management told them nothing.
That is, until 2:57 p.m. Friday, when the company's chief financial officer told Wendy Bishop to make an announcement over the public address system, for all employees to meet in the cafeteria at 3 p.m. That is where Howard Schoenfeld, the crisis management consultant, told them that Color Arts would be closing its doors.
By 4:30 p.m., the locks on those doors had been changed.
"I said (at the employee meeting) that I want to know why we had to hear it from Howard," said Mark Johnson who worked for 20 years in Color Arts' ink lab. "I want to hear it from
management."
Bill Hellman, 36, was a permit and survey manager who had been with Color Arts for two years. He already has a new job, which he starts Monday. Hellman knew more about the seriousness of Color Arts' financial situation than he could tell people.
He knew that company checks made out to subcontractors had bounced. He knew that subcontractors had been told to stop doing work on Color Arts' accounts - he had told some of them.
"It was very clear, at that point, that we were in no position to go on as a company," Hellman said.
Hellman told subcontractors they were to stop work until the company collected money owed by the client. While it was true there were unpaid accounts, that wasn't the real reason for the work stoppage.
"We were looking to buy time," Hellman said. "That was a front."
Hellman said the company was trying to save itself and its accounts, and to protect the contractors from doing work they might not get paid for. He couldn't tell the subcontractors, or other Color Arts employees, that Color Arts was in serious financial trouble.
"As soon as one statement's made, `Hey, we're in trouble financially,' it'll spread like wildfire," Hellman said.
After the closing, large groups of employees gathered at least two pubs afterward, where they expressed anger that they had not been able to do their jobs and left customers hanging.
"The only thing I have not been happy with in the past week, is they could not tell suppliers what was going on," said Laurie Swanson. Swanson, 44, had been with Color Arts for a year, after being laid off from CNH. "I was not able to service my customers properly, and that's what I feel bad about.
"I had a lot of people yelling at me and screaming at me over the phone, and all I could tell them is, `I don't know,' " Swanson said.
Employees also said they were worried about each other.
"Frankly, I worry about the people there, in their 50s and 60s, who thought Color Arts was their entire life," Forbes-Castaneda said.
Some employees insisted on staying optimistic. Yes, this was a setback for their co-workers, they said. But Color Arts employees would land on their feet.
"It's not about the job," said Matt Reid, 32, an accounts manager who had been at Color Arts for three years. "It's about the people you meet along the way."
Swanson agreed.
"The one thing is, we are a family," she said. "I've been through this before. I survived."
Director of photography Mark Hertzberg contributed to this report.
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| Officials: Color Arts never asked for help |
