Framingham's Bose Cut Workforce By 245 People In March

FRAMINGHAM, MA - Framingham-based Bose Corporation laid off 245 employees in March, the latest in a series of staff cutbacks that began in 2019.

The audio technology company has let go about 1,000 employees a year since 2019, according to an article in The Boston Globe citing company documents. The company has faced stiff competition from larger competitors including Apple.

Even before the pandemic led to a surge in online shopping, Bose decided to close all of its U.S. stores in January 2020.

Last fall, Bose sold its office campus in Stow, where it had 1,500 employees who were transferred to the Framingham campus. Bose Corporation announced that it had entered into a purchase and sale agreement with The Masters Academy, a private for-profit boarding academy with a sports focus.

Bose also dropped its sponsorship of NFL football coaches’ headsets last April, advertising rights the company had held since 2014.

The company was founded in 1964 by Amar Bose, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2011, two years before he died, Bose gave MIT majority ownership of the company in a deal that meant it could never go public. MIT receives annual cash dividends from Bose and cannot sell its shares.

Bose generated $3.2 billion in sales during 2021, down from $4 billion two years prior, according to reports.

Patch reached out to Joanne Berthiaume, a spokesperson for Bose, but a response was not immediately received.