After only two months on job, One Kings Lane’s new CEO Dinesh Lathi has been busy with an unpleasant task: laying off workers.
Home décor e-retailer One Kings Lane let 79 employees go last week, a spokeswoman confirms. The move impacted 15% of the retailer’s workforce across all departments in its three offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.
The merchant also shut down Hunters Alley, a marketplace of used goods the merchant launched last year.
The layoffs were a strategic management decision aimed at driving profitability, as opposed to focusing solely on top-line sales growth, according to a source familiar with the decision-making process.
The layoffs come around two months after One King’s Lane CEO Doug Mack left to lead web-only sports gear seller Fanatics Inc. They also come six months after the retailer raised $112 million from Mousse Partners and other investors in a funding rounding that valued the e-retailer at $912 million.
One Kings Lane has raised $229 million since its founding in 2009. The merchant, ranked No. 99 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, brought in an estimated $320 million in sales last year, up 60% from 2012.
One Kings Lane isn’t the only flash-sale retailer of home goods that’s laying off workers. Fab.com, No. 183 in the Top 500, announced in May that that it would lay off 80-90 workers at its New York City location. That represents one-third of the e-retailer’s global team, and comes after previous Fab.com job cuts.
One Kings Lane is the sixth-largest online retailer of housewares and home furnishings in North America in terms of e-commerce revenue, while Fab.com is the eighth-largest, according to the Top 500 Guide.