REI (Sumner, Wash.) announced its plans to lay off 357 employees, which include 200 at its corporate headquarters, according to a company statement written by CEO Eric Artz. This is the third time the retailer is cutting its workforce within the last 12 months.
Cuts include 121 people employed at distribution centers, 6 in sales and customer service, 30 in “Experiences” and 200 employees at its headquarters in Washington. The company is reportedly not planning to rehire for vacated leadership roles and will be reducing its senior leadership team by 22 percent overall.
“While this work was primarily driven by financial necessity, we took a strategic approach to evaluating team structures against business needs to ensure consistency across the organization as leaders made decisions about which roles to eliminate. While many decisions were based on work that no longer exists, we also focused on reducing duplicative work, layers and hierarchy to build more efficient and connected teams,” Artz says in the memo.
Last February, 167 people were laid off from REI’s corporate headquarters, and in October, an additional 275 employees were laid off. Currently the company has 16,000 employees.