Jason Del Rey

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Fab’s Chief Product Officer Among Execs Being Laid Off (Updated)

fab broken heart layoffs

As we reported yesterday, embattled e-commerce startup Fab is planning to notify 50 to 100 employees this week that they will be out of jobs in three months. AllThingsD has learned who some of the top executives on the layoff list are.

Sources said Fab will be parting ways with its chief product officer, David Paltiel, who has been with Fab for about two years, according to his LinkedIn profile; its head of human resources, Allison Rutledge-Parisi, also a two-year veteran of Fab; merchandising execs Grace Glenny and Tracy Doree; and Matt Baer, who led the company’s new DBY custom furniture business. Most of these execs will have the option to stay on three more months, but will not have a job at Fab after that.

(Update 6:01 pm ET: While company sources confirmed that Rutledge-Parisi would be leaving Fab, spokeswoman Deborah Roth now says that the HR head will remain an employee “for the foreseeable future.”)

Sources also tell AllThingsD that Devin Flaherty, the company’s head of user experience, has resigned. Fab will also lose its chief operating officer, Beth Ferreira, in the next month or two, as reported earlier.

None of these employees were on a list of execs mentioned by CEO Jason Goldberg as “refounders” in a recent memo he wrote, published by Valleywag.

When this round of layoffs is complete — the company’s third in recent months — Fab’s staff will be around half the size it was at its peak of nearly 700 employees, if not smaller.

The company said that some of the cuts it has made have been required as it restructures its business from one that focused on a flash-sales model and did not carry its own products to a more mainstream online store backed by inventory and warehouses. Other cuts are being made simply to rein in costs amid a push for profitability, CEO Jason Goldberg has said.

Either way, the number of employees being shed is astonishing for a company that has taken on more than $300 million in outside investment, and at least $165 million alone in the last few months.

Fab spokeswoman Deborah Roth declined to comment on individuals affected by the layoffs.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus