Fab.com to cut a third of its staff in latest round of layoffs

Fab confirmed Wednesday it plans to lay off between 80 and 90 employees this week, about a third of its workforce, the design e-commerce site's third round of reductions in the past year.

The lay offs, which were first reported by BuzzFeed, will affect only employees based in New York, a company representative told CNET.

"We are parting ways with incredibly talented individuals for whom we have only great respect and appreciation," the company said in a statement to CNET. "Realigning our team is part of a broader business plan, which we began implementing last Fall and which will continue to unfold in weeks ahead."

The matter came to light Wednesday when Fab employees reported receiving an email from the company's human resources department that instructed them not to come into the office on Thursday and await the scheduling of one-on-one meetings.

The design e-commerce site, which sells furniture, clothes, and decor, is no stranger to dramatic shifts. Fab launched as a social network for the gay community in 2010 but became a design-focused, flash-sale site a year later, quickly picking up millions of members along the way. Fab then ditched the flash-sales model last July for a "following" feature that personalized what customers see on the site and what products are pushed to them.

Not long after announcing that strategy shift, Fab announced plans to lay off more than 100 employees from its Berlin headquarters, or about 15 percent of its global workforce. As part of that reorganization, the company asked more than 30 employees in its Berlin office to relocate to New York.

Three months later, in October, Fab announced it was cutting another 101 jobs, or nearly one-fifth of its work force, as a continued slimming down related to its earlier reorganization.

The company has received $300 million in venture funding from heavyweight Silicon Valley firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures, giving it a $1 billion valuation.