Clorox to Shut Armor All Facility in Orange County

The corporate headquarters of Armor All Products Inc. will be closed this spring and most of the headquarters staff laid off as its new owner, Clorox Co., ends the car-care company’s 25-year history in Orange County.

Employees of the company, founded in Irvine in 1972, were told Monday morning that as many as 80 of them will be laid off beginning March 31, when Clorox, which paid $408 million for Armor All in December, begins moving the company’s operations to its Oakland headquarters. A total of 106 employees work at Armor All’s headquarters in Aliso Viejo.

Armor All’s new president, longtime Clorox executive Lawrence S. Peiros, delivered the news in a staff meeting early Monday and employee relations specialists immediately began meeting with individual workers to explain the layoff program and severance packages.

Several employees, interviewed as they left the white concrete and smoked-glass building that Armor All built about eight years ago, said they were saddened by the news. The workers--some grim-faced and others laughing and wisecracking about being terminated--declined to offer specifics about what they’d been told.

The decision to shutter the headquarters wasn’t unexpected. Although still profitable, Armor All’s earnings were hurt by packaging-related product recalls and highly publicized claims that its Armor All Protectant can damage vinyl dashboards and car tops that get heavy exposure to sunlight. The claims have never been proven.

Profit plunged 71% in fiscal 1996, to $7.1 million from $24.5 million the year before. Earnings rebounded to $7.6 million in the six months ended Sept. 30 but were far off the pace set in 1995 and earlier. Clorox said at the time of the purchase that it intended to boost Armor All’s profit--a process that often involves substantial layoffs in companies such as Armor All that are labor-intensive. Armor All doesn’t make its own products, relying instead on five contract manufacturers. The company’s employees are almost all in sales, marketing and administration.

By assigning most of the jobs now held by Armor All employees to existing Clorox workers in Oakland, Clorox figures to cut Armor All operating expenses considerably. The company will be a subsidiary of Clorox, and the Armor All product name will survive. Clorox plans to sell the 42,234-square-foot Armor All building, which occupies a 4.9-acre parcel atop a hill in a slowly developing Aliso Viejo industrial park.

Immediately after the sale to Clorox closed Jan. 2, Armor All’s top officers, including Chief Executive Kenneth Evans and Chief Financial Officer Mike McCafferty, departed.