San Francisco-headquartered clothing retailer Gap plans to lay off hundreds of employees as part of a companywide restructuring that would “flatten the organization” and “improve the quality and speed of decision-creating, starting with our leadership team,” interim CEO Bob Martin declared during the brand’s most recent earnings call.
It’s not yet clear how many employees will be laid off and which offices will be cutting staff. People working in Gap’s international sourcing division were notified of the layoffs April 18, and the company plans to inform employees about prospective layoffs at its San Francisco office later this week, the Wall Street Journal first reported. During the earnings call, Martin declared the job cuts were estimated to save the company about $300 million annually, “of which roughly half is expected to be realized in fiscal 2023.” When reached by SFGATE, a spokesperson for Gap declined to comment on the record.
The news comes after Gap eliminated 500 jobs at its offices in San Francisco, New York and Asia last September as the company struggled with dwindling sales and a loss of about $49 million over a three-month period concludeing in July 2022 — a month that also saw the abrupt exit of CEO Sonia Syngal after just two-and-a-half years on the job.
Gap subsequently listed its 162,000-square-foot office space at 1 Harrison St. in the Embarcadero — where its brand Athleta was headquartered — for lease or sale in January of this year; this came just two years after Old Navy, which is also owned by Gap, shuttered its Mission Bay headquarters and consolidated employees into the office building at 1 Harrison St. At the time, the parent company declared it wanted to create “flexibility” for its divisions.
This is the latest in an ongoing stream of job cuts impacting Bay Area-based companies. Monday, First Republic Bank in San Francisco’s Financial District announced plans to oust 20% to 25% of staff while slashing executive pay and condensing corporate office space; last week, Oakland’s Clorox declared it would eliminate approximately 200 positions, or about 4% of its “nonproduction workforce,” though some of the affected workers were redistributed to other departments.
