Gorillas, the last-mile express delivery startup, continues to be at the center of the hurricane. After the announcements of the dismissal of a large part of its staff and its possible departure from some of its less profitable markets –with comings and goings in contradictory communications–, the inevitable is happening: Gorillas wants to reduce costs above anything else. Meanwhile, he makes some somewhat inexplicable decisions.
The funding rounds have ceased. The faucet of investment funds has ceased to have interest in a market that already points to being unprofitable. Also in which the competitors –equally or better financed– they are gaining ground over others. The founder of Gorillas himself said it: few will survive in a sector in which few could be profitable and the future was black.
All in all, the Gorillas problem goes back a long way. The startup of German origin has been the victim of a story that is repeated very often in companies with explosive growth: lose focus and spend where it is not needed. The company, focused on fast deliveries, received 1,000 million less than a year ago after a long list of investment rounds. Then he decided to create a record company and move to a restored building – an old brewery – in one of the best neighborhoods in the German capital. Today, little is known about his musical labelbut a lot about how its policy of cuts is being.
The free bar on Apple products for Gorillas employees is over
And it is that Gorillas has a problem inherited from a complicated management. According to Bloomberg, that has had access to internal emails from the technology company, the company is struggling with one of its internal policies. That of free expenses. What is this? neither more nor less than a kind of free bar of Apple products. Without having an internal registry of MacBooks, tablets or Airpods that entered the company, employees literally made the devices their own. If they left the company or were fired, they simply became their property. The same happens with discount codes, those that had the mission of attracting new users and that suppose one of the highest costs in the marketing area. Gorillas works to end the abuse of these promotions –which they still identify as a minority– by users who use several accounts to continue enjoying them.
On the other hand, Gorillas are also facing the lack of staff in their ranks. They are reportedly moving staff between departments to cover layoffs from a few weeks ago. Likewise, and without confirmation from the company, everything indicates that warehouse supervisors are also being laid off, even in the regions that the technology company identified as more profitable a few weeks ago. London or Berlin are some of them.
And now a beer of your own…
But they are not the only problems. Added to all this history is the stay of the employees, always according to Bloomberg, on food waste suffered by warehouses. According to the employees, the lack of organization means that hundreds of perishable foods end up in the garbage because they do not have space in the refrigerators or there is not enough demand.
And yet Gorillas is not clear about the business focus. While its problems grow, the technology company remains committed to one of its focuses: creating its own products available only through its application. Craft beer –its main focus–, oat milk and recyclable coffee capsules with a single objective: the loyalty of customers who want that specific brand. Also with a clear result: as they are very common products in any market, regardless of the brand, it is most likely that they only serve to increase the costs of a company that has left many millions on the way.