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One Kings Lane, the once high-flying online furniture retailer, is laying off 25 percent of its staff, its CEO Dinesh Lathi said in an email to employees today. Eighty-nine employees will depart as part of the layoffs. Five members of the company’s executive team are also leaving, the email said, without identifying them.
“Over the past six weeks, the leadership team has been working to determine how we can further accelerate the pace at which we innovate and execute on behalf of our customers and vendors while continuing to meet our financial goals,” the email read. “The plan the team has landed on envisions a leaner organizational structure than the one we have today. While we believe this new structure positions us well to execute our plan, it unfortunately also contemplates the elimination of approximately 25 percent of the positions in the company.”
The layoffs come about 18 months after earlier cuts that cost 15 percent of the employees their jobs, after the online retailer saw revenue growth slow and tried to rein in costs amid a failed foray into peer-to-peer sales. One Kings Lane, along with Gilt Groupe, is one of the best-known flash sale retailers to fall on hard times as consumers tired of the model. Investors valued One Kings Lane at more than $900 million when they pumped $112 million into the company in early 2014.
“Eliminating roles is always a challenging decision, and is even more so during the holiday season,” the email continued. “While it may seem insensitive to announce this news at this time of the year, we felt it would be far more insensitive to suspend the transparency and honesty that we hold important by delaying our communication of this decision.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
