Tudor Manea, CEO of the eMAG Group, explained at a press conference on Wednesday the reasons why the group decided to lay off 31% of its total workforce by early 2026.
Tudor Manea said that the layoffs came after the company observed a decrease in consumption and anticipated a more difficult economic context in the coming years. According to him, the company began preparing measures as early as last summer to cope with a possible „shock.”.
„Last August, we saw this downward trend in consumption stemming from the fact that real income was falling, and we stopped to think: we need to prepare ourselves because there are going to be a few years—a year or two—when things will be more difficult. So, we started thinking about how to structure the organization so it could withstand such a shock. As a result, in April of this year, we let go of 300 people, about 31% of our total workforce. We had to make some choices. That is, we invested more in some areas and less in others. The areas where we chose to invest less were the ones that were affected,” said eMAG’s CEO at a press conference where he presented the group’s 2025 financial results and development plans, according to StartupCafe.ro.
He specified that some of the layoffs were in the offline area, with the closure of showrooms, and another part affected the content processing area.
„One area was the offline one; we closed showrooms. Why did we choose to close showrooms? We didn't see solutions. Showrooms sold a lot of electronics and IT. eMAG sells many more categories, and we didn't see how to maintain good sales. Another area was content processing, where we had very good productivity from technology adoption. After that, the other areas were relatively small,” Manea explained.
Asked if AI-based tools played a role in the layoff decision, the eMAG CEO said they helped more with work efficiency, so that the remaining employees in certain areas would not feel an additional workload.
„I'd say that AI tools helped the people who remained in those areas not feel like there was more work,” he stated.
In Romania, the eMAG platform generated sales of 10.6 billion lei in 2025, up 3.91% from the previous year. The number of products ordered through the platform reached 87.2 million, an increase of 9.11% over the previous year.
Traffic on eMAG.ro exceeded the 1 billion visit threshold in 2025, up from 968 million in 2024. The range of products available to customers continued to expand, reaching 38 million offers in Romania, an increase of 10 million compared to the previous year.