Around 30 people will be departing Corbis over the next two months. Cognizant of the global economic crisis, the Bill Gates-owned company is taking a fiscally conservative approach to 2009.
Under the leadership of chief executive officer Gary Shenk, Corbis is increasingly focused on its financial health. Company spokesperson Dan Perlet told Selling Stock that Corbis has dramatically reduced revenue losses during the past two years.
In a similar vein, the January staff reductions were taken with a view of making the business as lean as possible during an extremely tough economic time. The cuts affected a number of different departments across various Corbis offices, though most were in the U.S., where the company employs the largest number of people.
Eliminated positions included several mid-level sales jobs. Corbis has also let go of information technology staffers whose jobs have been made redundant by the consolidation of Corbis and Veer operations.
Also departing are a couple of photo editors from the editorial team, where Perlet said client demand for a large number of images in as short a timeframe as possible has eliminated the need for editing content before making it available online.
“Nobody can really predict the market [going forward],” said Perlet, “but we have done a good job focusing on our financial health and are now in a much stronger place.”