Job cuts and lay-offs at jewellery brand Chupi amid fall in sales

A number of jobs have been cut or are under threat at Irish heirloom jewellery brand Chupi as the company’s leadership team moved to restructure the business in the face of a decline in sales, missed targets and increasing losses, The Irish Times has learned.

The company, founded by Dublin businesswoman Chupi Sweetman, has temporarily laid off about nine workers in recent days and is engaging with them in a consultation process over the future of those roles.

These lay-offs follow two earlier rounds of redundancies, the first of which began in October 2022. The second round began last July, some six months after the business secured a €3.75 million equity and debt investment from BVP, Abbey International Finance and Permanent TSB to fuel its ambitious growth plans for Ireland and the UK.

It is understood that at least 18 jobs have been lost through redundancies since 2022. Chupi employed some 54 people in late 2022, according to Companies Registration Office filings.

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Just before Christmas, the business also cut employee maternity benefits, Ms Sweetman confirmed on Tuesday. She said this was to bring them “in line with [Chupi’s] competitors”, and closed its UK office, bringing it back to Ireland as part of a “restructuring”.

“We reviewed some of our benefits across the business, mainly in line with competitors. Some of ours were out of whack. So some of the benefits packages were looked at. We’re still very generous,” she said.

Chupi, which opened a flagship store on Clarendon Street in Dublin 2 last October, lost €1.27 million in 2022, recently filed abridged accounts for Blazenvale Ltd, the entity behind the brand, reveal. This followed a €591,143 loss in the 2021 trading year.

In response to questions this week, Ms Sweetman, who is listed as a director of Blazenvale along with her husband Brian Durney, characterised the losses as “planned”, adding that the business had made a number of “very significant investments” in marketing and branding in the year. “To turn a profit, that is the dream every single year, but part of growth is occasionally that you don’t deliver a full profit,” she said.

It is understood, however, that while Chupi was expanding and rebranding in 2023, the leadership team had communicated to staff that the business had underperformed its forecasts with a double-digit decline in online sales dragging on Chupi’s headline revenues.

The leadership team told staff that due to financial constraints, budget cuts would have to be implemented across the departments.

In a statement on Wednesday, a spokesman for the company declined to confirm its headcount and whether another financial loss was “planned” for 2023.

“Since 2022, we have been focusing on areas with the highest potential for growth, and these changes in our operating model reflect a strategic realignment rather than a reduction in our business capacity,” the spokesman said. “We continue to focus on enhancing our online platform and retail strategy to meet the changing needs of global customers. We strongly believe that Chupi is positioned for a bright future, and we are excited about the opportunities ahead.”

Ms Sweetman had said on Tuesday that generative artificial intelligence programmes like ChatGPT had replaced some of the roles in Chupi’s copywriting and imagery departments.

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