Shopify has announced it is cutting 10 per cent of its staff
Tobias Lütke, the e-commerce company’s chief executive, said in a written statement that the cuts would span areas of the business including recruiting, support, and sales.
The Canadian company said on Tuesday (26 July) that it had banked on the surge in online shopping caused by pandemic measures becoming permanent, but that the “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 five-year leap ahead,” said chief executive Tobias Lütke in a note to employees.
Around 1,000 employees across the business’s operations will be affected. Lütke said most of the roles impacted were in recruiting, support and sales. Some groups that were “convenient to have but too far removed from building products” are also being eliminated.
When Covid lockdowns were initially put in place, Shopify was one of the online businesses that benefited from a surge in demand. The company, which provides services for businesses to set up online shopping “threw away our roadmaps” to respond to the crisis, Lütke said.
“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.”
