Less than four months after slashing 15 percent of its staff, online furniture seller One Kings Lane plans to close its Los Angeles office, according to sources briefed on the plans.
One Kings Lane Shutting Down Los Angeles Office
It’s not clear how many employees will agree to relocate to New York City.
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Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
The company started notifying Los Angeles-based employees on Monday that the office would be shutting down, telling some employees it would happen by the end of the year. Most, if not all, of the 45 or so employees were offered the opportunity to relocate to the company’s New York City office, sources said. It’s not yet clear how many will choose to relocate.
A One Kings Lane spokeswoman declined to comment.
The Los Angeles office had already suffered layoffs in June, in part because the company closed down a new site called Hunters Alley that was an eBay-like marketplace where people — not businesses — could sell used furniture and home decor directly to other people. The Los Angeles office is also home to employees who work in merchandising for the vintage category of furniture and home decor sold on the main site. It’s not yet known whether Andrea Stanford, the exec who manages the Los Angeles merchandising team, will make a permanent move to New York. One Kings Lane also has an office in San Francisco.
One source said management is viewing the shutdown as a necessary move to get all of the merchandising team in one location as the company grows. Another source said some employees believe that company execs know a good chunk of Los Angeles-based employees won’t agree to the move, and One Kings Lane will be able to cut those positions without formally announcing more layoffs.
Either way, it’s clear that One Kings Lane CEO Dinesh Lathi is not afraid to make bold moves in his first six months on the job to cut costs, refocus the company, reignite growth. After taking over in April following the departure of former CEO Doug Mack to Fanatics, Lathi cut 79 jobs in June and shut down Hunters Alley.
One Kings Lane raised $112 million earlier this year in an investment that valued the company at more than $900 million. But the e-commerce company, which was founded in 2009 by Ali Pincus and Susan Feldman, has seen revenue growth slow recently, sources have previously told Re/code. The company built its business around a flash-sale model of selling high-end furniture and decor, where a limited quantity of products is sold off in time-restricted sales designed to inspire impulse purchases.
Wayfair, the parent company of One Kings Lane competitor Joss and Main, recently went public in a multi-billion-dollar IPO. But Wayfair’s huge marketing costs are raising questions about whether the online furniture seller can reach profitability while maintaining strong revenue growth.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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