Online furniture retailer Wayfair has confirmed it will cut around 870 jobs, equating to 5% of its global workforce, in an effort to reduce operating costs.

The US-based retailer, which has a UK office in London and a warehouse in Lutterworth, didn’t specify where redundancies would be made.

Niraj Shah, CEO at Wayfair, said the redundancies were ‘a difficult decision’ but would help the company ‘manage operating expenses and realign investment priorities’.

Recently, Wayfair reported second quarter losses of $378m compared to its profit of $131m last year, with sales falling 14.9% to $3.3bn from $3.8bn against the same period in 2021, representing a decline of $573m.

Wayfair said the costs of the staff cuts would be in the range of $30m to $40m, due to employee severance and benefit expenses.

“This year, that growth has not materialised as we had anticipated. Our team is too large for the environment we are now in, and unfortunately we need to adjust,” Niraj said.