A headline yesterday wrongly said that BenQ Canada had left the country. This was an error. We apologize for any confusion. A corrected version of the story appears below.
The head of BenQ Canada says the company’s head office in Toronto will close at the end of January with remaining staff working from home offices, but full sales, marketing and support of its products are continuing here.
“We’re selling projectors, monitors and input devices,” Mike Booker, general manager of the Canadian division said. “It’s business as usual. The only change is that the backend operations have been transitioned to the U.S. and front-end sales and marketing initiatives continue as normal.”
He said that after a change in strategy to move out of consumer goods, mainly LCD TVs, and with an IT product-focused business, the division did not need as many people so is closing the downtown Toronto office.
Booker vigorously objected to a CDNnow headline and blog Thursday saying the division has left the country. It has not, he said. He also said the story wrongly stated the division’s Web site had not been updated since November. The site was updated as recently as last week, he said.
The downsizing involved the release of five backend and operations people so far, and another two will leave at the end of the month, because “we had to improve our efficiencies” with the withdrawal from the CE market.
Five persons in sales and marketing – including himself – remain to continue sales and marketing efforts.