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In the past two years, the macroeconomic downturn has penetrated all walks of life. Looking at the cross-border circle, from small and medium-sized sellers to top sellers, they are all facing more arduous challenges in going overseas. Even e-commerce giants are also unable to remain immune and are inevitably hurt by the consumer downturn.
Just a few days ago, Amazon, which had initiated a layoff plan of 18,000 employees due to a growth crisis, launched a new round of large-scale layoffs.
The second round of Silicon Valley layoffs swept through, Amazon laid off another 9,000 people A second round of bloodbath is spreading in Silicon Valley.
According to foreign media reports, on March 20, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to employees that Amazon will lay off another 9,000 employees in the coming weeks on top of previous layoffs. After the news was released, Amazon's stock price closed down 1.25%, and its current total market value is $1.001 trillion. It is learned that from November last year to January this year, Amazon has laid off more than 18,000 employees, mainly involving employees in multiple departments such as retail, equipment, recruitment and human resources.
According to the memo, the layoffs mainly cover Amazon's cloud computing services, human resources, experience and technology departments, advertising business and game streaming platform Twitch.
"Due to the many uncertainties in the macro economy, Amazon has decided to lay off more employees to streamline costs," Jassy said. "The first principle of our annual plan this year is to streamline so that we can continue to invest heavily in key long-term customer experiences that we believe can significantly improve the lives of customers and the performance of Amazon as a whole." In fact, this round of layoffs had been foreshadowed. Last week, the CEO of Twitch, a subsidiary of Amazon's game live broadcasting, announced his resignation, and the new CEO said that as part of Amazon's latest round of human resources adjustments, the department will lay off about 400 people. Earlier this month, Amazon also announced that it would suspend the construction of its second headquarters in Virginia due to "some complex political and social issues. "
In addition to Amazon, other US technology giants have also recently announced similar layoffs. Last week, Facebook's parent company Meta announced that it would lay off another 10,000 employees and close 5,000 additional vacancies in order to save costs and improve efficiency; Apple announced that it would postpone the payment of some bonuses and freeze the recruitment of more jobs; in addition, Google announced a layoff of 12,000 people in January, and Microsoft also announced a layoff of 10,000 people in the same month.
The sluggish economic situation has caused technology companies to adjust their future expectations, cut jobs, reduce recruitment, reduce costs and increase efficiency to cope with macro uncertainties. In addition to external reasons, the sequelae of over-expansion during the epidemic also broke out. As of 2021, Amazon has more than 1.6 million employees worldwide. The growth dividend of the epidemic has enabled it to expand its business, and related costs have also risen.
Now that the benefits of the epidemic have dissipated, Amazon's growth rate has begun to slow down. According to financial reports, its net sales in 2022 were US$514 billion, a record low, and its net loss was as high as US$2.7 billion.
Forced by the situation, Amazon has been cutting spending since the end of last year, freezing recruitment for some positions and significantly reducing its workforce, mainly in warehousing and logistics.
Amazon's successive large-scale layoffs have also affected sellers. On the one hand, the shortage of warehouse staff has significantly reduced the efficiency of logistics and delivery, and the efficiency of product warehousing and merchants has dropped significantly compared to the past. On the other hand, Amazon, which has encountered performance bottlenecks, has also continued to increase the operating costs of various platforms. The operating costs of sellers have been rising in recent years. From the brink of delisting to rebirth in adversity, the company sold 3.5 billion in one year Amid the unstoppable consumer downturn, how have the big sellers performed overall in the past year?
On March 20, Lightinthebox released its fourth quarter and full-year financial report for 2022. The financial report shows that Lightinthebox achieved full-year revenue of US$503 million in 2022, a record high, and doubled compared to the strategic reorganization in 2019. Among them, Q4 revenue reached US$156 million, a year-on-year increase of 38%.
▲ The picture comes from LightInTheBox
However, at the same time, due to a one-time provision of approximately US$43 million for impairment of long-term equity investments, Lazada's Q4 and annual net profit incurred a loss. On the other hand, gross profit margin further increased, operating profit improved compared with the same period last year, and losses were significantly narrowed.
Focusing on the core business of Lazada, apparel category, the company achieved sales revenue of US$400 million in 2022, accounting for 79% of total revenue. Sales in the fourth quarter increased by 59% year-on-year to US$124 million.
Benefiting from the increase in the proportion of apparel revenue, Lazada's overall revenue quality has significantly improved, with gross profit margin further increasing to 54%, up 8 percentage points from the same period last year.
However, behind the impressive performance lies the ups and downs of the development history of "Lanting Xu".
Founded in 2007, Lightinthebox mainly sells apparel, home furnishings, 3C and other categories, and serves more than 200 countries and regions around the world. Lightinthebox has shown its potential since its inception, and its rapidly growing performance has condensed into the halo of "China's first cross-border e-commerce stock", helping it to be listed in the United States in 2013.
However, in the second year after its listing, Lightinthebox's momentum took a sharp turn for the worse. After achieving $382 million in revenue in 2014, Lightinthebox's performance has stagnated at $300 million to $400 million since then. Multiple difficulties such as soaring costs, capital shortages, and growth bottlenecks have constrained Lightinthebox. In addition, with the rise of cross-border e-commerce, more and more competitors have sprung up, further squeezing its living space.
The turning point came in 2018. After merging with Singaporean e-commerce company ezbuy and entering the Southeast Asian market, Lightinthebox regained its vitality. As it continued to improve its supply chain and logistics system and optimize various businesses, its performance once again reached a new level, and it began to see the dawn of turning losses into profits in the third quarter of 2019. In 2020, it focused on strategic transformation and focused on a development strategy centered on apparel sales.
From five consecutive years of losses and once facing the risk of delisting, to surviving and seizing new growth points, Lazada's performance has now tended to rise steadily, achieving counter-cyclical and rapid growth in 2022 when the external environment was full of challenges.
In this regard, LightInTheBox also summarized the three major development strategies that helped it to go against the tide: First, adapt to changes in market demand and provide customers with more abundant and cost-effective products
Second, in the differentiated competition strategy, the target customer groups are further precisely positioned. Lightinthebox clearly defines the global "over 40 years old, middle class, energetic, and pursuing the joy of life" population as the main target audience.
Third, in terms of product development strategy, we will maintain continuous capital investment, continuously improve operational efficiency, and achieve sustainable development and operation of the enterprise. Let us wait and see what kind of growth story "Lantingxu" will write in the future.
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