NEW YORK, NY—Designtex, a Steelcase company eliminated its four man marketing department last week  (week of August 21), including the position of the director of marketing held by Caroline Vaughn,  in favor of another arrangement  according to Susan Lyons, president.

What that arrangement will be, whether it is an outside marketing agency or some other arrangement is not known at this time and Lyons is not saying yet what it will be. Earlier reports that a marketing agency was taking over the marketing function at Designtex on an outsourcing basis  can not be verified at this time.

Lyons, who has held the president’s post for less than 90 days made the decision to eliminate the four man marketing department of Designtex in favor of a new arrangement that will be made known in the near future, she told fandfi.com. It was expected that Lyons would make some changes in her return to Designtex and this is just one example of the change to do things better and more efficiently.

Industry insiders said this was a significant development and not a run of the mill type story. “Whenever a company like Designtex eliminates its marketing department it is big news,” one former industry executive said.

Designtex is a New York based contract specialist jobber with approximately $70 million in sales to the corporate and hospitality markets. Steelcase is a global publicly traded company with fiscal 2011 revenue of approximately $2.4 billion.