Groupon confirmed to TechCrunch that it has laid off more than 500 of its employees – 15% of its 3,416 workforce. It’s also reorganizing the company to focus “only on mission-critical activities and relying on more external support.” From the report: “Our overall business performance is not at the level we expected, and we are taking decisive action to improve our trajectory,” CEO Kedar Deshpande said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. The CEO says the layoffs, along with reinvestment in marketing and initiatives that drive customer shopping frequency, will set the company up to generate positive cash flow by the end of 2022.
In a letter to employees, Deshpande said Groupon is reducing its North American sales team to focus on “merchant engagement self-service opportunities.” He is also reorganizing the company to focus “only on mission-critical activities and relying on more external support.” “In addition, we propose to reduce cloud infrastructure and support functions as cloud migrations are completed.” Groupon is also shutting down its products business in Australia, more than a decade after it first launched there. Finally, Groupon said it is “streamlining” its real estate footprint to better align with hybrid operations. “The number of Groupon shoppers has declined dramatically over the past few years,” adds TechCrunch. “According to Statista, 22.2 million visitors to the company’s website purchased at least one offer in Q1 2022, up from nearly 54 million in Q4 2014.”
The report notes that these cuts are not as large as those made in 2020, when Groupon said it would lay off or lay off 2,800 employees in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
