In January 2025, Fortune Brands Innovations announced it was moving its company’s portfolio from individual offices across the country to one central headquarters outside Chicago, which meant hundreds of employees would need to relocate, or else lose their jobs. The move would take place in a phased approach beginning at the end of the summer, then-CEO Nicholas Fink told employees.
Unsurprisingly, the news sent a jolt through the company, which owns several home and security brands including Moen and Master Lock, employees told Fast Company. On LinkedIn, a steady stream of goodbye posts from employees who refused the move emerged over the next several months.
That summer, the company said that while most employees chose not to relocate, it exceeded industry benchmarks for the number of people who said “yes” to the move, though it declined to provide specific figures.
Then, in February 2026, in the midst of that multi-phase relocation, Fink quit. Constellation Brands, the maker of Corona beer, announced that Fink had accepted a position as its next president and CEO. On the same day, Fortune Brands announced that Amit Banati, a veteran consumer goods executive and existing board member, would replace Fink.
But that succession never happened. According to The Wall Street Journal, activist investor Ed Garden built a stake in Fortune Brands, having criticized Fink as “lacking leadership and industry experience” and arguing that the company risked making the same mistake with Banati. Banati never took the job and stepped down from the board—though he still walked away with an $18.4 million payout, Fortune reported.
In March, the company announced it had launched a new CEO search and had appointed David Barry, a Fortune Brands exec who’d been with the company for over a decade, as interim CEO, effective immediately. In the past five years, under Fink’s leadership, the company saw slowing sales growth and declining profit margins as housing demand cooled, while competitors such as Masco, known for Delta faucets, held up better.
Though Fortune Brands says Fink’s departure was not related to company performance nor the relocation, some employees saw his exit as tantamount to leaving a sinking ship: a ship that he sank.
From the start, the relocation was unpopular, employees said. “Most people were stressed out,” a Master Lock employee who asked to remain anonymous told Fast Company. “Employee morale did go down. We started to lose people. There was a lot of anxiety, because by then it was clear that the tariffs were negatively impacting the economy. There was a lot of fear.”
In his interview with Fast Company last May, Fink acknowledged the magnitude of asking people to uproot their lives and families to move to another state. “It’s a big change for a lot of people,” he said at the time. “There are people who are committed to their communities and their families and aren’t interested in a move. …And then there are people who are very excited to be a part of this.”
The company hired more than 400 new employees at its Deerfield, Illinois, campus, but the departures still left a hole. “You could feel the vacuum, the gut of culture, that was there and now is missing,” Michael, a former engineer for the company who asked to be identified only by his first name, told Fast Company. When senior employees with “deep, tribal knowledge” left, he said it caused great concern. There was a feeling of, “Welp, who knows how long that server is going to work?”
Another employee who worked in IT for Fortune Brands and also asked for anonymity noted that many of the employees who left had been at their brand for decades. “They took this massive network of very unique and talented and intelligent individuals, and then said, ‘Just because your location is this, you no longer serve our purpose,” she told Fast Company.
As another employee put it on LinkedIn, the company “seemed to think two weeks would be enough time for 20-30-year employees to do the knowledge transfer. It’s sad.”
The rollout of the relocation was turbulent, employees complained. The IT worker, who was given an exit date after telling the company she wouldn’t relocate, said her end date was unexpectedly moved earlier, giving her shorter notice than the company had promised. The company flip-flopped on other decisions, too: After originally saying it planned to close the Moen headquarters in North Olmsted, Ohio, the company later decided to maintain some operation there, cleveland.com reported.
In a statement sent to Fast Company, Fortune Brands addressed some of the relocation issues: “As the process unfolded, we adjusted and adapted, including pushing back some end dates due to knowledge gaps we uncovered along the way, or accelerating some end dates because we were able to hire faster than expected,” the statement said, in part. “All individuals who experienced an end date change received several weeks of advanced notice as well as their full, robust separation benefits.”
The instability at the top also didn’t sit well with some employees in the wake of the restructuring. “If you’re going to move for a company, you want to think that the company has a really solid future and a solid plan, and this doesn’t quite send that message,” the Master Lock employee said.
The IT employee took aim at Fink, specifically, and said his exit showed “cowardice.” “From a leadership perspective, I think you should stick around and own what the results are,” she said.
Fast Company reached out to Fink via Constellation Brands and did not hear back.
Fortune Brands maintains the new headquarters was the right decision. “We are already seeing the benefits of this move take shape—from access to Chicago’s broad and deep talent pool, to stronger cross-functional collaboration and cultural cohesion,” the company said in a statement, in part. “We are excited about the momentum ahead and confident in where we are headed.”