Decisions

Today we made the decision to say goodbye to 30 more members of the Birchbox team. This comes after cutting 50 people in January of this year.

Running a company requires constant decision making — dozens, if not hundreds in a day. It is painful to see any decision not pan out, immediately or ever. You can’t help but feel like your job is to get 100% of decisions right, but clearly that is impossible and not what defines success.

Today’s decision to further reduce our staff is part of our story, not THE story.

We are one of the fortunate companies that is growing and has supportive investors, but today’s climate demands growth companies make changes to show a more immediate path to profitability, conserve cash in uncertain times and rethink cost structures in order to sustain and build a company that can both survive and thrive in any market. We thought we did that in January, but the cuts were not deep enough to get us where we need to go in the time frame we want. Looking back at that decision, I wish I had been less conservative.

Ultimately, I wouldn’t change our story, because I know that the hard part is where you build the muscle that gets you to the next level. I feel deep gratitude for every person that has been a part of our story and will be a part of the next chapters. To the customers who have embraced us, investors who have backed us and employees who have committed to our vision and dedicated themselves to growing this company, thank you. We will continue working to build the company you love.