Wayfair announces layoffs, including 1,200 corporate employees

Online retailer Wayfair announced Friday that it will lay off 10% of its workforce, with most of the jobs lost being at the corporate level.

Wayfair said the reduction of 1,750 employees — including 1,200 in corporate positions — will save about $750 million a year.

“These changes reflect efforts to eliminate management layers and reorganize to be more agile,” Wayfair said in a news release.

“Although difficult, these are important decisions to get back to our 20-year roots as a focused, lean company premised on high ambitions and great execution,” said Niraj Shah, CEO, co-founder, and co-chairman, Wayfair. “The changes announced today strengthen our future without reducing our total addressable market, our strategic objectives, or our ability to deliver them over time. In hindsight, similar to our technology peers, we scaled our spend too quickly over the last few years.

The good news for Wayfair is that we have operated in a highly productive and efficient way for the vast majority of our 20 year history, and we are now simply returning to that.

“To our colleagues departing Wayfair, I want to thank you for your contributions to the company and for the impact you’ve had on the business. We’re deeply saddened that these changes will take us in different directions.”

Additionally, business momentum continues to strengthen. In December, year-over-year gross revenue trends experienced a further improvement compared to the month of November.”We are encouraged by our recent topline performance and in particular the momentum in orders,” commented Niraj Shah. “Our market share continues to improve as our core offering strengthens across key dimensions such as availability, speed, and price.”

Wayfair said the majority of the “labor savings” are in the Selling, Operations, Technology, General and Administrative area and “are largely completed as of today.”

Other businesses recently announcing layoffs include Google, which will lay off 12,000 workers and Microsoft, which is laying off 10,000 workers.

Bed Bath and Beyond also is shuttering stores and laying off employees as it struggles.