Zappos trimming staff, laying off portion of workforce
Online retailer Zappos is laying off a portion of its workforce but it’s unclear how many staffers have been impacted.
The downtown Las Vegas company, which started trimming staff on Tuesday, said it is laying off less than 4 percent of its staff though sources have said the layoffs could affect as much as 20 percent of its workforce. Employees impacted by the move are being offered severance as well as insurance benefits.
“As part of our regular business planning, we’re evaluating all areas of the business to find operational efficiencies while continuing to prioritize the customer experience,” Zappos spokeswoman Laura Davis said in an email to the Review-Journal. “Zappos is an employee-first company and it’s never easy to say goodbye to our colleagues — we don’t take a decision like this lightly.”
Changes to its workforce comes roughly five months after Scott Schaefer took on the permanent role of CEO in April. Schaefer, previously vice president of finance, stepped in as acting CEO after former CEO Kedar Deshpande resigned last year to join Groupon.
Zappos is a division of e-commerce giant Amazon.com. Former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh sold the company to Amazon in 2009, in a deal valued at about $1.2 billion.
He was replaced as CEO of Zappos in summer 2020 without a formal announcement from the company he had led for two decades. He died in November 2020 after being critically injured in a house fire in New London, Connecticut.
Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com. Follow @seanhemmers34 on Twitter.
