Pelco Layoffs September 2011

Schneider Electric has announced layoffs, aka a 'workface reduction' for the Pelco division and Clovis facilities. We spoke with Schneider and they confirmed that the layoffs are part of a broader corporate restructuring impacting many parts of Schneider Electric.

Read the official Schneider/Pelco layoffs statement.

This is the latest in a series of layoffs at Pelco in the past few years. However, this is the first one that Schneider reports is part of overall parent company restructuring. In June 2008, Pelco laid off 19 people and put the corporate jet up for sale. Then, in January 2010, Pelco laid off 100 employees.

While we do not know Pelco's specific financial state, we believe that Pelco, like almost all analog incumbents, are challenged to make the transition from analog to IP sales. The problem is the overall video surveillance market is not growing fast. While the IP segment is booming, it is coming mostly at the expense of the analog segment. A dollar made by an incumbent like Pelco on the IP side is often offset by a $1 or more lost on the analog side as they are shifting existing customers and often losing customers to IP only providers like Axis, Arecont, Avigilon, etc.

Update: The Fresno Bee is reporting [link no longer available] that approximately 50 people were layed off out of a total roughly 1500 - about 3% of the total workforce. The Bee notes that the layoffs were "scattered throughout the Clovis manufacturing plant and were not in one particular department."