Restructuring at Reef leads to layoffs

I heard there were some internal changes happening at Reef yesterday, so I checked in with new Reef Americas President Jim Gerson.

Here is what Jim had to say:

"After evaluating the organizational structure necessary to meet our business and financial goals, Reef has restructured. This restructure eliminated nine positions within product and marketing departments.

"These are very difficult decisions to make. We have re-shaped the business to align with our objectives to remain the top sandal resource and focus on our T-shirt and boardshort categories. We are confident that we have a solid structure in place to meet our consumers' expectations."

VF Corp. acquired sandal-maker Reef in 2005 and VF CEO Eric Wiseman recently described the brand as "struggling." Over the past year, there have been several changes at Reef including the decision to license the women's swim line and exit most cut-and-sew apparel categories for men and women which eliminated a significant number of jobs, the departure of Reef president John Wilson in May and the appointment of Gerson, the new president, in June. Dave Gatto, who ran Reef before it was acquired by VF, left VF in January.

Gerson was previously vice president of apparel for The North Face, another brand owned by VF. The North Face and Vans have been the top performing brands at VF.