Three of the most important online retailers announced layoffs this week. Macy’s, Amazon, and Wayfair will all cut their workforces in the primary month of 2024.
Macy’s ranks No. 17 within the 2023 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000. The Top 1000 is a rating of North America’s leading retailers by online sales. Amazon ranks No. 1, and Wayfair ranks No. 10.
Macy’s cuts corporate staff
Macy’s will lay off 2,350 members of its corporate staff, The Wall Street Journal reported. That’s 13% of its corporate staff, and three.5% of its overall workforce, excluding seasonal employees. Their last day will likely be Jan. 26.
“As we prepare to deploy a brand new strategy to fulfill the needs of an everchanging consumer and marketplace, we made the difficult decision to cut back our workforce by 3.5% to turn out to be a more streamlined company,” Macy’s said in a press release. Following the layoffs, Macy’s will add automation to its supply chain and outsource some roles, in line with a memo viewed by The WSJ.
The retailer may even close five Macy’s locations in California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida.
It has not yet reported holiday sales results. Macy’s reported net sales declined 7% to $5 billion in its fiscal third quarter ended Oct. 28. Digital sales and brick-and-mortar sales declined at the identical rate. Macy’s online marketplace is growing, with GMV (gross merchandise volume) up 22% over Q2, the retailer said.
The common customer “continues to be under pressure and discerning about how they spend in discretionary categories we provide,” president Tony Spring told investors. Spring is poised to take over as CEO in February.
Wayfair pursues one other round of layoffs
Wayfair will cut 1,650 employees, it announced Friday. That’s 13% of its total workforce and 19% of corporate employees.
“The changes announced today reflect a return to our core principles on resource allocation, comparable to getting fit on spans and layers in addition to specializing in our highest priorities. Because of this, we’re reducing team sizes across the organization, in addition to reducing seniority in certain roles that we plan to rebuild with modified leveling over the course of this 12 months,” CEO Niraj Shah said in a press release. The layoffs are expected to avoid wasting about $280 million annually, Wayfair said.
The news comes weeks after Shah announced the net furniture retailer had turn out to be profitable again. On the time, he sent a memo to employees encouraging frugality and long hours.
“Working long hours, being responsive, mixing work and life, will not be anything to draw back from,” he wrote. “There will not be plenty of history of laziness being rewarded with success.”
Wayfair previously laid off 1,750 employees in 2023 and 900 in 2022.
Amazon layoffs hit Buy with Prime
Amazon announced plans to put off about 5% of its Buy with Prime unit on Thursday. That amounts to simply over 30 employees, Reuters reported.
Buy with Prime gives retailers access to Amazon’s success and logistics network and payments system for products not listed on Amazon. Within the week preceding the layoffs, Amazon announced a brand new integration for the service for Salesforce clients.
“Buy with Prime is a top priority for Amazon, with strong adoption from merchants and positive feedback from customers, and we’ll proceed investing significant resources in Buy with Prime to construct on that momentum. We’re grateful to those employees for his or her contributions, and we’re focused on supporting them of their next steps,” a spokesperson said in a press release.
Amazon also laid off 500 employees at streaming platform Twitch and a whole bunch of employees at Prime Video earlier in January.
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