Glossier Lays Off Third of Workforce

Glossier (New York) laid off more than 80 employees, which is a third of the company’s workers, this past Wednesday. Emily Weiss, CEO of Glossier, reportedly said in an email obtained by Retail Dive that the beauty brand had “made some mistakes.”

In August 2020, Glossier closed all its brick-and-mortar locations. Last year, the retailer made moves back into the physical retail space with three stores, and Glossier still plans to expand its footprint. The workers laid off Wednesday were mostly employees comprising the retailer’s technology team.

Weiss acknowledged the difficulty of layoffs during a pandemic and said the company would work to support affected employees.

In the email, Weiss said, “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. We also got ahead of ourselves on hiring. These missteps are on me.”