Hasbro has announced plans to lay off 1,100 employees, citing rough sales performance persisting through the whole of 2023. This swath of layoffs will encompass a fifth of Hasbro’s workforce.
CEO Chris Cocks said: “This is a lever we must pull to keep Hasbro healthy, as challenges which the company faced in the first three quarters of 2023 continued into the fourth. Market headwinds have proven to be stronger and more persistent than planned. While we’re confident in the future of Hasbro, the current environment demands that we do more, even if these choices are some of the hardest we have to make,” he wrote in an email to staff. “I know this news is especially difficult during the holiday season. We anticipated the first three quarters to be challenging, particularly in toys, where the market is coming off historic, pandemic-driven highs. While we have made some important progress across our organization, the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into holiday and are likely to persist into 2024.”
In conjunction with the downsizing of workforce, the Rhode Island headquarters of Hasbro will be closing, and staff will be reassigned to their Pawtucket location.
In October, Hasbro reported that it was positioning to return to profitable growth. A plan for Q4 was shared which intended to drive share over the holiday period and exit the year with clean inventory, a much-improved corporate overhead and a clear runway for introducing new product innovation and market support going forward. Hasbro admitted at the time, though, that toy category declines had changed its ‘total Hasbro outlook’, and Gina Goetter, chief financial officer, said the company would be ‘resetting its cost base and removing complexity’.
Chris Cocks added in his email: “To position Hasbro for growth, we must first make sure our foundation is solid and profitable. To do that, we need to modernize our organization and get even leaner… We decided to communicate now so people have time to plan and process the changes. For those employees affected we are offering comprehensive packages including job placement support to assist in their transition. Let’s support each other, and lean in to drive through these necessary changes, so we can return our business to growth and carry out Hasbro’s mission.”