LivingSocial To Lay Off 400 Employees

Daily deal site LivingSocial announced today it would lay off 400 employees worldwide, mostly in the United States. Although many of the customer service positions in the company’s Washington, D.C. headquarters will be relocated to the company’s Tucson call center for cost-saving measures, other sales and editorial positions will be eliminated in order to “streamline.”

“We’ve gone through two years of hypergrowth, from roughly 450 employees to 4,500,” company spokesman Andrew Weinstein told CNN. “The space has gone through such growth that we needed to catch our breath.”

The workforce reduction “will free up additional resources for the company to invest in some of the critical things in our business, like mobile efforts,” Weinstein added. “We thing this actually puts us on the right path for long-term growth and profitability.”

In what Weinstein calls an unrelated move, LivingSocial’s president of international operations Eric Eichmann is also resigning. The company’s international operations have been its least profitable, and it has actually pulled out of some international markets. Weinstein said the company is in the process of reviewing its international business, but would not speculate if additional overseas layoffs are in the future.

Less than 30 of the 400 layoffs this week are based overseas, he said.

The job cuts come just one month after Amazon reported a loss greater than analysts expected, in part due to its investment in LivingSocial. As the demand for online coupons has slumped, Amazon was forced to write down the value of its 29 percent stake in the company.

The Washington D.C.-are layoffs also put into question a $32.5 million tax break the D.C. council awarded the company on the promise jobs would remain the in the area. By reducing its D.C. staff, LivingSocial may forfeit the credit which would take effect in 2016.

LivingSocial posted a net loss of $566 million in the third quarter.