Business Insider

Groupon Is Cutting 1,100 Jobs and Backing Out of Seven Countries

This could end badly.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

This post originally appeared on Business Insider.

The deals site Groupon is laying off 1,100 people and closing down operations in seven countries, the company’s COO, Rich Williams,announced in a blog post on Tuesday.

The company will be cutting 1,100 jobs, mostly in customer service and in its international Deal Factory department.

“Evolution is hard, but it’s a necessary part of our journey,” Williams said.

“It’s also part of our DNA as a company and is one of the things that will help us realize our vision of creating the daily habit in local commerce.”

Groupon will close its operations in the international markets Morocco, Panama, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Thailand, and Uruguay. Last month, Groupon also closed its operations in Greece and Turkey.

“We believe that in order for our geographic footprint to be an even bigger advantage, we need to focus our energy and dollars on fewer countries,” Williams said in the blog post.

According to a document filed with the SEC, Groupon will incur its job cuts at a pretax charge of $35 million; $22 million to $24 million of those charges are expected in the third quarter of 2015. The restructure will be complete a year from now, in September 2016, according to the filing.

Groupon launched in 2008, offering its customers discounts at restaurants, spas, and retail stores. It is intended to be a way for small businesses to sell excess deals and inventory while bringing in new customers who may not have otherwise discovered these businesses. For a while, Groupon was the world’s fastest-growing company.

You can read Groupon’s full blog post on the restructuring here.

See also: Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn says he’s NOT going