Birchbox CEO says the company is laying off a quarter of its employees
- Birchbox is laying off a quarter of its employees, the company confirmed to Business Insider.
- The New York-based subscription service sends customers a box of four to five samples of makeup and other beauty products on a monthly basis.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The subscription service Birchbox is laying off a quarter of its employees globally, the company confirmed to Business Insider on Thursday.
"We are creating more synergy across markets and consolidating globally. To reduce redundancies across the US, UK and Spain, we made the difficult decision to downsize our team by about 25% globally," Birchbox CEO and cofounder Katia Beauchamp told Business Insider in a statement. "This includes plans to move some of our UK operations to Spain, managing the UK market from the Barcelona office."
The layoffs will wipe out about half of the company's New York-based staff, according to a notice filed with the state of New York.
Specifically, 44 of Birchbox's 94 New York-based employees will be laid off by May 30, the notice stated.
Birchbox sends subscribers a box of four to five samples of makeup and other beauty products on a monthly basis.
Here's Beauchamp's full statement to Business Insider:
"We are creating more synergy across markets and consolidating globally. To reduce redundancies across the US, UK and Spain, we made the difficult decision to downsize our team by about 25% globally. This includes plans to move some of our UK operations to Spain, managing the UK market from the Barcelona office.
In 2019, we significantly improved the fundamentals of our business, increasing the value of every subscriber and meaningfully improving the unit economics of the business. We introduced tiered pricing that incentivized longer-term commitments; as a result, our subscriber base is smaller but we doubled individual subscriber value, decreased churn to record-low levels, increased margin on our monthly subscription, and saw a 4x increase in customers signing up for 12-month subscriptions.
Building on that progress, we believe creating more savings through these operating efficiencies is the best path forward for the company."