American cycling co-op REI braced to lay off 357 staff

REI has announced that due to challenging economic circumstances in the year ahead, it will be cutting 357 jobs within its headquarters and other facilities excluding retail. REI is an American cycling co-op that sells bikes, clothing and accessories.

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In a memo first shared on bicycleretailer.com that was originally shared with REI employees, the exact divisions affected by these cuts have been detailed. A total of 200 employees at the brand's headquarters will face redundancy, six from customer support and sales, 30 from teams that support classes and multiday trips, and 121 in distribution centres.

CEO Eric Artz said the following in the memo issued to staff on Thursday 25 January: "As I shared in my most recent CEO Huddle, while the U.S. as a whole has avoided entering a recession (by definition, two consecutive quarters of total U.S. market decline), outdoor speciality retail has experienced four quarters of decline and that trend has been worsening. While we were able to outperform this trend for much of the last year, it caught up to us in Q4 and we now expect conditions to remain very challenging throughout 2024"

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Elsewhere in the memo Artz also added: "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."

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