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"Online design store Fab announced Tuesday that it plans to lay off more than 100 employees in its Berlin office \u2014 about 14% of its total staff \u2014 by the end of the year.\nNews of the layoffs is surprising given that Fab is currently flush with cash, having just raised $150 million in venture capital. But CEO Jason Goldberg says this has been on the roadmap for some time, as the company evolves from a flash sales model to an inventory planning model.\nSEE ALSO: Fab Wants to Become the World's Largest Design Store\n\"Up until now Fab essentially ran two separate flash-sales businesses, one in the U.S. and another in Europe,\" Goldberg wrote on Fab's blog Tuesday. The goal, now, is to run Fab as one global business headquartered in New York. \nGoldberg indicated that layoffs are mostly hitting those in Fab's merchandising, marketing and operations teams. As part of the consolidation, 30 Fab employees are being transferred from Berlin to New York. At the same time, the company is looking to double its engineering team and to staff up its sourcing and planning departments, he said.\nGoldberg reiterated that Fab is not looking to scale back its European business and that the company will maintain its local customer service, returns, shipping and logistics, finance, IT and HR positions at both of its European offices. (The other European office is in Edinhoven.) He added that the company is also continuing to look at expansion to Asia.\nImage: Fab"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/07/30/fab-100-layoffs/>