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Zappos, an online shopping store has laid off 8% of its workforce. The news was published in a post on the official Zappos blog, by the CEO Tony Hsieh and verified by Silicon Alley Insider by scanning the Twitter feed of the company employees. According to Tony’s Blog post:

Today has been a tough, emotional day for everyone at Zappos. We made the hard choice of laying off about 8% of our employees. The layoffs will affect almost every single department at Zappos. In addition, we are also looking at closing some of our brick and mortar outlet stores in Nevada
and Kentucky.

This is one of the hardest decisions we’ve had to make over the past 9.5 years, but we believe that it is the right decision for the long term health of the company. The rest of this email will explain why…

We feel fortunate that we have Sequoia Capital as an investor who had the foresight to see the ramifications of the tough economic times that lie ahead for all of us. On October 7, Sequoia held a meeting for all of their portfolio companies (including Zappos), with one very clear message: Cut expenses as much as possible and get to profitability and cash flow positive as soon as possible.