AM I NEXT? NO LOVE AT BIGCOMMERCE HOLDINGS

Austin, Texas-based BigCommerce Holdings, an e-commerce platform for small and medium-sized businesses, has announced a restructuring and cost-cutting initiative that will examine its organizational structure, real estate footprint, and personnel requirements to accelerate its path to profitability.

The cost-cutting initiative will impact its total workforce by approximately 13% across both employees and contractors. It is estimated that the reduction in force will impact 150 employees and be essentially complete by December 31, 2022.

According to company CEO Brent Bellm, “This focusing of our spending and resources, which impacts all of our teammates, was an incredibly difficult decision to make. We are implementing changes that will enhance the strength of our financial profile against the backdrop of a challenging economic environment. It will also drive focus on the areas we view as having the strongest product market advantage and best long-term financial performance. We are sadly parting ways with some incredibly talented people whom we have grown to cherish as friends and colleagues over the years. We will do our best to support them through the transition to find their next opportunities.”

Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. We see good people being laid off through no fault of their own. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?

AM I NEXT? NO LOVE AT RENT THE RUNWAY

New York, New York-based Rent the Runway, an operator of a fashion e-commerce platform that allows users to rent, subscribe, or buy designer apparel and accessories, has announced a restructuring initiative to contain costs.

The effort will impact 24% of the company's corporate workforce, an estimated 240 employees.

According to Chief Executive Jenn Hyman, “We’re significantly pulling forward the path to profitability. We can get to profitability at much lower revenue numbers. The restructuring won’t cut marketing, inventory, or customer-facing positions. We’re not relying on growth in the same way to get us to profitability.”

“It is becoming clear to us that our customers live, work, socialize and travel differently in 2022 than they did prior to the pandemic. We are still learning how these types of changes in customer behavior impact the business, particularly in challenging natural environments. If remote and hybrid work trends increase, our subscription business might become more socially and casually oriented, and we might experience more seasonal peaks and troughs.”

Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. We see good people being laid off through no fault of their own. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?

AM I NEXT? NO LOVE AT SHOPIFY USA

San Francisco, California-based Shopify USA, a division of the Canadian multinational e-commerce platform company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, has announced a major 10% companywide reduction in force.

The reason given for the reduction in headcount was that the post-COVID purchasing using e-commerce has declined sufficiently to prompt an adjustment in personnel to market conditions.

Approximately 1,000 employees will be impacted. According to the company, most of the layoffs will affect "recruiting, support, and sales, and across the company we’re also eliminating over-specialized and duplicate roles, as well as some groups that were convenient to have but too far removed from building products."

Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke noted in a blog post...

How we got here

When the Covid pandemic set in, almost all retail shifted online because of shelter-in-place orders. Demand for Shopify skyrocketed. To help merchants, we threw away our roadmaps and shipped everything that could possibly be helpful. It was hard, but we know for a fact that more merchants’ businesses survived the pandemic because of the work we did in this time and that’s exactly what our mission is about.

Shopify has always been a company that makes the big strategic bets our merchants demand of us - this is how we succeed. Before the pandemic, ecommerce growth had been steady and predictable. Was this surge to be a temporary effect or a new normal? And so, given what we saw, we placed another bet: We bet that the channel mix - the share of dollars that travel through ecommerce rather than physical retail - would permanently leap ahead by 5 or even 10 years. We couldn’t know for sure at the time, but we knew that if there was a chance that this was true, we would have to expand the company to match.

It’s now clear that bet didn’t pay off. What we see now is the mix reverting to roughly where pre-Covid data would have suggested it should be at this point. Still growing steadily, but it wasn’t a meaningful 5-year leap ahead. Our market share in ecommerce is a lot higher than it is in retail, so this matters. Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I got this wrong. Now, we have to adjust. As a consequence, we have to say goodbye to some of you today and I’m deeply sorry for that."

Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?