• Buzzy unicorn luggage startup has furloughed about half of its workforce and laid off another 60 corporate employees, a company spokesman confirmed to Business Insider.
  • Away's founders Steph Korey and Jen Rubio announced the cuts in a blog post on Tuesday, which have affected nearly every department at the New York-based company.
  • The news comes on the heels of a bombshell investigation by The Verge in December 2019, which described a problematic workplace culture at the company.
  • Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Away is the latest startup to be hit by layoffs amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The unicorn luggage startup has furloughed about half of its workforce and laid off another 60 corporate employees, a company spokesman confirmed to Business Insider. More than 500 people list Away as their employer on LinkedIn. 

The company's founders Steph Korey and Jen Rubio announced the cuts in a blog post on Tuesday, which have affected nearly every department at the New York-based company. Travel has been hit particularly hard amid the coronavirus crisis, and Away's sales have plummeted 90% over the last few weeks. The Information first reported the news. 

"While almost all companies have been impacted by this global crisis, our company — with equal footing in the travel and retail spaces — is facing unprecedented challenges with no clear timeline for recovery," a company spokesman said in a statement to Business Insider.

The company is giving employees eight weeks severance and will cover the cost of health care coverage through June and extending the time employees have to exercise their stock options after leaving the company, according to the blog post.

"Today, the company's salary costs alone exceed our revenues many times over," Korey and Rubio wrote in the post. "What once seemed like a healthy cash balance is no longer enough to keep the lights on without dramatic action." 

The news follows the company shuttering its ten retail stores, reducing spend and freezing hiring, and Korey and Rubio suspending their own salaries with members of the senior leadership team reducing their own, they said in the post.

It also comes on the heels of a bombshell investigation by The Verge in December 2019, which described a problematic workplace culture at the company and led to Korey stepping down as CEO. Korey ultimately returned to the role when Stuart Haselden, a former Lululemon COO, was named co-CEO.

Other direct-to-consumer companies, including lingerie startup ThirdLove and beverage startup Iris Nova, have cut staff as consumer spending declines amid the coronavirus pandemic. Online spending on direct-to-consumer products week over week declined 7% on average between March 2 and 22, according to Edison Trends data.

Away has raised $181 million in venture capital funding and is backed by venture firms Accel and Forerunner Ventures. 

Got a tip about what's going on at another direct-to-consumer company? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 702-2530, email at tdua@businessinsider.com, or Twitter DM at @tanyadua. 

Loading Something is loading.

Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus you'd like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the pandemic? Please email covidtips@businessinsider.com and tell us your story.

And get the latest coronavirus analysis and research from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is impacting businesses.