Poshmark, a Redwood City, California-headquartered secondhand apparel marketplace, is laying off a proportion of its 800+ employees. The reduction is coming about two months after South Korean internet firm Naver completed its acquisition of the company earlier this year for $1.2 billion.
Naver agrees to acquire fashion marketplace Poshmark for $1.2B
Poshmark confirmed to TechCrunch that the company is cutting its workforce due to the economic slowdown but did not disclose the number of people impacted.
“We made the difficult decision to reduce the size of some of our teams to better align with our priorities for the future, the current economic climate and our return to being a private company,” a spokesperson at Poshmark told TechCrunch. “We are incredibly grateful for the contributions of the talented people in the roles that were impacted.”
It also did not disclose the number of total employees at the company, nor whether the layoffs would be in the U.S. only or globally. On its LinkedIn Profile, it describes itself as having “over 800” employees.
We have asked the questions and will update this post as we learn more.
Update, 2/24/23, 9:05 AM ET: The spokesperson told TechCrunch that less than 2% of its workforce was affected, primarily in the U.S. The affected employees were notified this week, the spokesperson said, adding that Poshmark offered each employee financial support, continued full healthcare coverage and outplacement services.
Poshmark’s job cuts come as a number of tech companies are also downsizing their workforces. As the economy dips, tech companies, in particular, have seen their businesses slow down, and so they are turning to layoffs as part of bigger cost-cutting strategies to focus more on profitability. That is a trend that has not spared fashion e-commerce, with others like Everlane and StitchFix collectively laying off hundreds of employees in recent months.
Founded in 2011, Poshmark claims to have more than 80 million registered users across the U.S., Canada, Australia and India. It was delisted from Nasdaq after the Naver acquisition was completed, but according to the last accounts it filed in 2021, it had an annual gross merchandise volume of $1.8 billion and posted net revenues of $44.4 million in Q3 2022, an 11% year-on-year increase, with a gross merchandise value of $475.6 million in the same period.
At the time of Naver’s acquisition, Poshmark’s leadership touted the scaling potential and technology investments that would come with the deal.
“As a part of Naver, we’ll benefit from their financial resources, significant technology capabilities and leading presence across Asia to expand our platform and enhance our user experience for the Poshmark community and create additional value for all our stakeholders,” founder and CEO of Poshmark Manish Chandra said in its statement earlier this year. “[We] look forward to seeing Poshmark employees benefit from being part of a larger, global organization who shares our values and vision around content, community and empowerment.”
During its press conference in San Francisco last month, Poshmark unveiled a new shopping feature, Posh Lens, which will enable users to find a list of similar products on the Poshmark platform when they take a picture of a product using Posh Lens.
CEO of Naver, Sooyeon Choi, said in its statement in January that Naver technologies like its search engine, AI recommendation and e-commerce tools, would all get incorporated into Poshmark to enhance the user experience on the platform.
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