Big Lots closed area stores at 359 Miamisburg Centerville Road in Washington Twp. and 7779 Tylersville Road in West Chester Twp. earlier this year.
The company has stores located in Fairfield, Huber Heights, Kettering, Lebanon, Middletown, Miamisburg, Piqua, Riverside, Springdale, Springfield and Trotwood.
The company filed a Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification, or WARN, notice Thursday with Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, saying it would start the process of terminating 555 positions at Big Lots Corporate Headquarters at 4900 East Dublin Granville Road in Columbus the week of Dec. 29.
It said that process would be completed in April.
Ohio follows federal requirements under the Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires employers to provide written notice to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services’ Dislocated Worker Unit (Rapid Response Unit) at least 60 days in advance of covered plant closings and mass layoffs.
In general, a WARN notice is required when a business with 100 or more full-time workers is laying off at least 50 people at a single site of employment.
Big Lots in June said it expected to close as many as 40 stores this year, but those numbers swelled to 150 and then ballooned to 315, according to a July 31 Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The retailer has nearly 1,400 locations across 48 states. Only Alaska and Hawaii are without stores.
The retailer reported that it lost $205 million for the first quarter of 2024, according to a June 6 earnings release. Bruce Thorn, Big Lots’ president and CEO, said in that release that “While we made substantial progress on improving our business operations in Q1, we missed our sales goals due largely to a continued pullback in consumer spending by our core customers, particularly in high-ticket discretionary items.”
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