Gilt Groupe Faces Severe Restructuring
Gilt Groupe will be letting go 5-6% of their staff. Rumors have surfaced that the company will be consolidating several departments of the company. gilt.com

[Updated 1/11/12 9:28pm]

The King of Silicon Alley, founder of Gilt Groupe Kevin Ryan, is restructuring his kingdom -- but not to the extent that was originally reported.

Gilt Groupe was originally expected to be facing severe restructuring according to two unnamed sources cited in Betabeat, the popular tech blog. One of the rumors said that layoffs could be as high as 170 employees. Another rumor reported was that the company was being eyed for consolidation. Both of the rumors that were reported were wrong.

Gilt Taste, which hired former Gourmet editor-in-chief as editorial director last May, was expected to run at roughly half of the current employees. Someone else close to the matter speculated that Gilt Taste could be shut down all together. Ryan denied these rumors and more in an interview with AllThingsD.

We are not closing down any businesses, said Ryan in the AllThingsD interview. We are not closing down Gilt Taste, and we aren't merging Gilt City and Jetsetter.

It's pretty minimal in the scheme of having 900 employees, he later added about the 50 employees that the company will lay off. Not only will we do that [have cutbacks], but we will continue to do that. What Gilt needs to be, and is doing, is to create a fantastic consumer experience while running an efficient company.

Business Insider, a company that Ryan is the chairman of, reported that 5-6 percent of Gilt Groupe will be let go in a number of departments in an attempt to break even in cash-flow by the end of the second quarter. Though Gilt Groupe will lay off roughly 50 of its 900 employees, it will end this quarter with more employees than it started with.

In October, Gilt City, a site in Gilt Groupe, purchased a company called BuyWithMe, which was forced to lay off more than half its staff in order to sweeten the deal. In addition to the layoffs that BuyWithMe faced at the time Gilt Groupe acquired it, many members of the BuyWithMe sales team were asked to take a 25 percent pay cut.