David’s Bridal (home office)

The corporate environment is extremely toxic. The current CEO, Jim Marcum, has taken the company backwards when it comes to morale. He thinks, and says, anyone who has been there for any length of time is a problem and the cause of the company’s financial struggles. Meanwhile, that was a result of prior executive teams refusing to use data to make decisions. Jim is no different and is repeating those mistakes which led to bankruptcy.

In addition, he sent out a very condescending email taking away MLK and President’s Day less than two weeks before MLK this year. Morale was already at an all time low based on how he treated us. This just made it worse because people had to scramble to find alternate daycare or use PTO.

Then comes the pandemic. The company came out of bankruptcy in January 2019 and almost ended up back in bankruptcy later that year. Instead, the debt was restructured and it seemed positive. However, the company obviously didn’t learn its lesson when it comes to cash flow and had to get even more money from the investors. To make matters worse, none of the executives live near the home office so the company pays for their weekday housing and their travel back and forth in the weekends.

At the start of the pandemic, about half the home office was furloughed. During furlough we received another email telling us that we were all losing about two weeks of vacation in 2021. The PTO was reverted back to vacation and sick time broken out separately and less days. Meanwhile, those of us furloughed had no idea if/when we were returning to work and here we are receiving the 2021 new vacation policy.

I have seen some job postings for the company in the last day or so, after just laying people off last week with the same title. My recommendation would be to look elsewhere. It’s not worth it there.

4 Likes

Good to know! I’ve always wondered what they were like in their career office.

Disgusting… higher ups only using the budget to help the higher ups… and treating workers like trash. Wow…so typical. Are they also biased against people of different races (no diversity in the office or preference to certain people based off their looks) and have heavy religious views? They’re probably getting rid of their workers to hire the same exact ones for less money.

Thank you for that insight. I’d heard that they laid off their entire in-house design team last year and I wondered if they were moving to an all-factory-designed model as a cost-cutting move. I’m guessing this was a decision made by that CEO.

That decision was made by the interim CEO as a way to cut costs and remove duplication. There is also a design team in China, but they do not work for David’s Bridal.

It may not seem obvious by my response, but there were 3 different CEOs in 2019.

1 Like