Marin-based furniture retailer RH (Restoration Hardware) cutting over 400 jobs

RH, the company formerly called Restoration Hardware, has announced plans to lay off about 440 employees, including 58 at its headquarters in Corte Madera.

The local layoffs will take effect May 24, according to a notice sent to the California Employment Development Department, the Marin County Board of Supervisors, the Workforce Alliance of the North Bay and the mayor of Corte Madera.

The company outlined its plans in a quarterly filing late last month with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It reported that net revenue for the 2022 fiscal year was $3.59 billion, down from $3.759 billion the prior year. Fourth-quarter net revenue fell from $903 million in 2021 to $772 million last year.

Gary Friedman, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, said the retail furniture industry is battling against lingering effects of the pandemic, inflation, rising interest rates, a dip in home values, a depressed stock market and the banking crisis.

“It’s times like these that businesses tend to move in herds, pursuing broadly adopted short-term plans that lead to mostly similar outcomes,” Friedman wrote in a letter to shareholders. “It’s also times like these that present opportunities to pursue the long-term strategies that can create strategic separation and significant value creation for those teams willing to take the road less traveled and pursue their own unique path.”

“Times like these also require us to have the discipline to say ‘no’ to the things that are nice to do in order to focus our time and resources on what is truly important,” he wrote. “That includes making the difficult decision to graciously say goodbye to team members whose roles are no longer essential in our new view of the future, enabling us to work in a more integrated and collaborative fashion, on fewer more important priorities.”

Friedman said the companywide job cuts will save about $50 million a year. The company forecasts revenues of $720 million to $735 million for the first quarter of 2023. Its net revenues were $957 million in the first quarter of 2022.

The company is carrying out an expansion that will establish outposts in the United Kingdom, Brussels, Dusseldorf, Munich and Madrid in the next 18 months, Friedman said. After that, the expansion will continue to Paris, London, Milan and Sydney.

The job cuts in Corte Madera range from relatively low-level workers to top executives, according to the company’s notice to state and local officials. The executives include the vice president for creative development, the vice president for quality and a vice president who is senior counsel.