Ebay Cuts 9% of Staff Amid Rising Competition

Online marketplace company eBay says it will lay off 9% of its workforce, citing a difficult macroeconomic environment.

Those job cuts will affect about 1,000 full-time employees of the eCommerce platform, CEO Jamie Iannone said in a message posted on the company’s website Tuesday (Jan. 23).

“Our overall head count and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business,” said Iannone. “We need to better organize our teams for speed — allowing us to be more nimble, bring like-work together, and help us make decisions more quickly.”

The chief executive added that employees who are due to be cut would be notified shortly, asking staffers in the U.S. to work from home on Wednesday (Jan. 24). The company also plans to cut back on the number of contract workers it employs in the months ahead.

As PYMNTS wrote last month, eBay once “served as a go-to site for online shopping in the past, offering a wide range of products, from rare collectibles to everyday items.”

“However, as eCommerce evolved, eBay lost market share to rivals like Amazon. To adapt, eBay shifted from its original auction-focused model to include more fixed-price listings.”

At the time, the company had just announced it was venturing into the luxury resale market, where it will compete with the likes of Poshmark and The RealReal, both of which provide platforms to buy and sell secondhand luxury goods.

The company debuted Luxe Line, a mobile consignment concierge that allows consumers to sell or buy luxury items in a physical location, along with its Certified by Brand luxury resale program that lets brands verify pre-owned items like watches, handbags and jewelry.

“And, as part of a move to go offline, eBay in November launched ‘Canal Street Wear,’ a pop-up shop in New York, showcasing streetwear from top-rated eBay sellers, featuring brands like New Balance, Louis Vuitton, Bape and Nike,” PYMNTS wrote.

News of the company’s layoffs come as a number of other high-profile companies are announcing job cuts. For example, furniture and home goods eCommerce retailer Wayfair last week said it would let go of 1,650 employees, which amounts to 13% of its global workforce and 19% of its corporate team.

“I think the reality is that we went overboard in hiring during a strong economic period and veered away from our core principles, and while we have come quite far back to them, we are not quite there,” Wayfair Co-founder and CEO Niraj Shah said in a message to employees