Nashua, N.H. — GN, parent company of headset makers Jabra and GN Netcom, will relocate Jabra’s headquarters from Lombard, Ill., to GN Netcom’s offices here. The move comes less than a year after the merger of GN Mobile’s Jabra brand headset business with that of GN Netcom.
The consolidation is designed to create maximum synergy and infrastructure effectiveness, according to a release. Consumer electronics veteran David Wood will continue to lead North American operations as senior VP and general manager of Jabra.
“Consolidating the North American operation into one location will allow us to better leverage the existing resources in Nashua and create greater focus on the business and our customers,” said Wood. “As we are now one organization focused on the headset business, unified processes and systems are necessary to support our global business units. With Jabra now integrated into one entity, it no longer made prudent financial or operational sense to have two separate offices for one operation.”
Transition of business operations will begin immediately, should take approximately six weeks and is expected to eliminate approximately 20 jobs, according to a spokesman. GN has more than 1,800 employees worldwide.
Up until the business merger last May, GN Netcom and Jabra operated separate sales, marketing and development efforts while sharing the same production and supply-chain functions.
The two brands are distributed through a total of 90,000 sales channels worldwide, including carriers, system integrators, consumer electronics chains and mobile phone specialists and rung up combined revenues of about $750 million in 2006.
