Published reports are saying that Glossier is laying off over 80 employees, about one-third of the DTC brand’s corporate workforce.
Modern Retail, the first to report the news after obtaining an internal Glossier email, reported that Glossier CEO Emily Weiss said in the email, “We have made the incredibly tough decision to part ways with over 80 members of our Glossier team.”
The email added that the company had made “some mistakes” over the past two years. “We prioritized certain strategic projects that distracted us from the laser-focus we needed to have on our core business: scaling our beauty brand.” Emily also noted that Glossier “got ahead of ourselves on hiring,” according to Modern Retail’s report.
According to the email, the technology team will be impacted the most. “[W]e are shifting our technology strategy to leverage external partners for parts of our platform that we’re currently maintaining internally,” Emily wrote.
In July 2021 Glossier raised $80 million in Series E funding to help scale its online and offline channels globally. The following month the company announced refocused efforts on retail (it had shuttered all of its doors in 2020 due to the pandemic) and opened a store in Seattle in August 2021, a store in L.A. in November, and one in London in December. At the time, Glossier said it was planning stores in New York City for 2022.