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From Home Furnishing Business
1,650 Employees Laid Off by Wayfair in Effort to Optimize to Win
January 21,
2024 by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Industry 
In a message from Wayfair CEO and co-founder Niraj Shah, 1,650 Wayfair positions were eliminated in an effort to “take important steps to get ourselves optimized to win and fit for the future…and have a clean organizational model that provides a healthy foundation to frow from.”
In the message, Shah leads with the update that “there are many things at the company that are going well.” He lists profitability, operational efficiency and customer approval, bring positive market share.
Wayfair’s structure from 2002 – 2022 involved ups and downs including lean times of building and growing to the surge of business brought on by the COVID pandemic seeming to require the growth of the Wayfair team again. By 2022, as the effects of the pandemic started to wind down, and life returned to “normal,” and consumer spending habits shifted again, Wayfair needed to restructure.
And so they continued to struggle to find the right way to fit their cost target, staff size and corporate structure until they have arrived here.
Shah communicates they are “committed to taking a different approach… to start with a few basic principles of good organizational design...as opposed to a cost target.”
According to Shah’s message, “We are gaining forward momentum due to everyone’s dedicated efforts. Our toughest stretch is now behind us. And I think our best year is right in front of us. We will get together next week as a team to talk more about these changes and the road ahead.”
Wayfair is offering their terminated employees with severance and support including access to the employee assistance program and the “Wayfair Alumni networking support, as well as other benefits and resources.”