Glossier furloughs its retail store employees after a leaked email hinted at possible layoffs
- Glossier is furloughing its retail store employees across stores in New York, Los Angeles and London as of June 1, the company confirmed in a blog post on its website Monday afternoon.
- The furloughs come on the heels of a leaked email obtained by Business Insider, which hinted at furloughs at the company in June.
- Employees will be paid through the end of May, the company said, and it will continue to cover benefits, including healthcare, through August.
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The company's stores have been shut since March 13 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but employees have continued to get paid throughout the closure. They will be paid through the end of May, and Glossier will continue to cover benefits, including healthcare, through August, Weiss said.
Glossier has more than a hundred hourly retail employees across New York and Los Angeles, and a team of roughly 50 in London that it employs through a third party, the company confirmed to Business Insider.
"At Glossier, we were among the first to close our retail locations to support public health, and we now believe we'll be among the last to reopen," Weiss wrote in the blog post. "For all these reasons, we unfortunately need to take the step of furloughing our incredible retail teams in New York, Los Angeles and London as of June 1."
Business Insider first reported that Glossier had continued to compensate its retail employees despite its stores being closed since mid-March. According to a leaked email obtained by Business Insider, Glossier said that it would keep store workers on the payroll through the end of May, but hinted it may have to cut workers off. Employees said that they hadn't heard from the company since the email was sent over a month ago on April 17.
Weiss blamed the fallout from Covid-19 as the reason behind the furloughs, saying that while the company had hoped that it would have a better line of sight to reopening its stores by now, that timeline reopening remains uncertain. She added that it was working on trying to figure out new offline experiences in the meantime.
"While this is a painful step, we remain as passionate as ever about the importance of offline experiences in Glossier's future," Weiss wrote. "As shopping for beauty online becomes the norm — and this period is certainly accelerating that trend — retail gets to be about so much more than just procurement: it's about human connection. We've always been building for this world, and this moment only deepens our resolve."
Weiss underscored the importance of retail, but implied that the store closures and furloughs wouldn't have a major impact on its business, saying that the majority of sales, "even in 'normal' times," happened online.
Are you a Glossier employee with a tip to share? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 702-2530, encrypted email at tanyadua@protonmail.com, email at tdua@businessinsider.com, or Twitter DM at @tanyadua.
SEE ALSO: Glossier store workers brace for layoffs after company tells employees it may stop paying them at the end of May if stores remain closed, leaked email reveals
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* This article was originally published here
https://www.businessinsider.com/glossier-furloughs-retail-employees-due-to-covid-19-2020-5
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