For sale, Made.com puts hundreds of jobs at risk

Online interior retailer Made.com is cutting jobs and putting itself up for sale. Faced with disappointing results, the company is now looking for a new owner.

One in three jobs in danger

In July, the struggling British furniture retailer had already announced that it would suffer losses this year due to rising costs and supply chain problems, but now the retailer is withdrawing its full-year forecast altogether. Sales of large items in particular are struggling, as consumers hold back and ever-rising costs eat away at margins. The company says it is also having to give discounts to get rid of its overstock.

The financial problems have grown so big that Made.com is forced to start a reorganisation. In the coming weeks, the British company is going to lay off employees. Although the furniture brand itself does not yet mention numbers, the Financial Times talks about 35 % – largely one in three – of the entire workforce. Made.com currently employs around 700 people, so that would amount to more than 200 redundancies.

Wanted: new owner

Made.com will also be looking for a new owner. The company went public last year, but has been unable to raise additional growth capital since then and has already lost a lot of ground on the stock market since then. Pwc is now given the order to look for a buyer. It is therefore possible that the company is already disappearing from the stock market.

Only last May, Made.com bought Trouva, a British platform for independent boutiques. With that acquisition, Made wanted to further develop into a fully-fledged design and lifestyle marketplace. At its launch, Made also pioneered the D2C model in the interior design industry: the online retailer works directly with factories in China for production, without intermediaries or physical shops.