Online furniture retailer Wayfair Inc. plans to lay off about 870 employees as it looks to cut back its expenses given that e-commerce growth for home furnishings hasn’t played out as robustly as executives once expected. The planned job cuts represent roughly 5% of Wayfair’s
W,
-20.58%
global workforce and about 10% of its corporate team, the company said in a Friday morning filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Wayfair also disclosed that it plans to make “substantial reductions in its third-party labor costs.”
Executives anticipate that Wayfair will incur about $30 million to $40 million in costs around severance, benefits, and other areas related to the layoffs. They expect to see “substantially all” of those expenses in the third quarter. Shares of Wayfair are off more than 20% in Friday afternoon trading. Chief Executive Niraj Shah said in a Friday blog post that the company grew “significantly” in the past few years to keep up with e-commerce growth seen earlier in the pandemic, but more recent trends have not matched expectations. “This year, that growth has not materialized as we had anticipated,” he said. “Our team is too large for the environment we are now in, and unfortunately we need to adjust.” “I take responsibility for the impact this decision will have on the nearly 900 Wayfairians who will be told today they are no longer a part of building our company’s future,” Shah added Wayfair’s management team previ …