Some of you may be familiar with the SuperCoups brand. They send you big blue envelopes full of coupons for a variety of services, some that you may actually want and a lot of others that you do not want at all. It is billed to most business, who pay to have their coupon included in the envelope to begin with, as a direct marketing tool. As you can imagine it ends up with the same fate as most junk mail, unopened and tossed out. The best it can really hope for is that it makes its way to the recycling pile instead of the trash bin.

So, it should be no great shock that this company needs to layoff staff in order to stay alive. The SuperCoups offices in Liberty and Union Industrial Park  are getting ready to scale back, based on the orders of its parent company.

A spokesperson for the company told a reporter for the Taunton Gazette that the change is designed to keep the company going, despite the fact that it was a tough decision. The exact statement was as follows, “Like all companies, we constantly evaluate the effectiveness of all of our operations and make decisions in the context of our overall business performance. Valassis considers layoffs as a last resort, but when necessary, we do so with the utmost respect and dignity.” This statement was made by Cindy Hopman, the  corporate communications manager for the parent company.

The parent company that ordered the layoffs is  named Valassis  and they have decided to stop selling coupons directly.  Current the rep for Valassis was not able to give out any hard numbers about exactly how many people were put out of a job by the layoffs. She told the same reporter, “There were some layoffs.  We don’t really talk exact numbers or specifics. I can tell you in the larger scheme of Valassis, as a company, it was not (a large-scale layoff). The decision was made basically as part of a long-term strategy for the company. It’s not economically feasible to operate the business in its current state.”

So, while you may be beginning to get the impression that the whole operation will be run by one guy plugging away on a laptop, we can’t be sure of that just yet. Apparently the company is expected to keep its current location, which is  62,000-square-feet in size.

The layoff notices have already gone out, but the actual jobs losses will not happen until the 11^th hour for the 2011-year, Dec 31^st, which at least keeps people in their jobs for the holidays. Though it will leave them with a clear set New Years goal.

The parent company, Valassis, can boast having about a 5,000-person workforce, spread out across the nation. So while the company many not consider these layoffs to be massive they are still relatively significant. The representative quoted above expressed her regret about the situation to the same journalist by saying, ““It’s never an easy decision when it involves people and it’s tough. No matter how small or big it is. It is always tough.”