Stitch Fix: Cut About 1,400 Stylists in June 2020

Category: apparel e-commerce
Pandemic-layoff role: Additional sourced company
Last updated: 2026-09-29

Pandemic-role map

Reader shorthand: online styling service whose best-known 2020 layoff, 1,400 California stylists, it said was not caused by the pandemic.
What Stitch Fix did for customers: sent boxes of clothing, called Fixes, picked by a human stylist from items its algorithms recommended; clients kept what they liked and returned the rest.
What changed in the pandemic: some warehouses closed temporarily under public-health orders, and the company moved styling work out of California.
Relief role: not a lender or relief intermediary; no Stitch Fix borrower appears in SBA's PPP loan data.

Before the pandemic

Stitch Fix, founded by Katrina Lake and listed on Nasdaq, ended fiscal 2019 (the year to August 3, 2019) with revenue of $1.58 billion and net income of $36.9 million. Its service depended on two workforces: stylists and the staff of its fulfillment centers.

What the pandemic changed

On March 20, 2020, Stitch Fix said public-health orders in California and Pennsylvania were forcing it to close two of its distribution centers temporarily. Its annual report later describes the spring: three of its eight fulfillment centers closed, fulfillment staff were offered four weeks of paid time off, and the number of employees allowed in each center was capped. On April 8 the company disclosed that Lake, its founder and chief executive, would forgo her base salary from April 13 through the end of the fiscal year.

On June 1, 2020, Stitch Fix announced a restructuring plan "to eliminate substantially all of our Styling team based in California" and recorded $4.8 million of termination benefits for it. Retail Dive reported the number as 1,400 stylists, about 18% of the company's 8,000 employees, and reported that Stitch Fix planned to hire 2,000 stylists elsewhere in the United States. The same report carried the company's position: "According to the company, these decisions are not related to the COVID-19 pandemic." Lake's statement said the California stylists would be offered the chance to relocate to roles in other states. The annual report filed that September lists, among its risks, "our strategy of hiring and training new stylists in regions outside of California."

The numbers

Fiscal 2020 revenue rose to $1.71 billion, up from $1.58 billion, while the company swung to a net loss of $67.1 million. On August 1, 2020 it had about 8,000 employees, including more than 4,700 stylists and 1,900 fulfillment-center staff, and about 3.5 million active clients.

After the first shock

Revenue peaked at $2.10 billion in fiscal 2021 and then fell for four years: $2.02 billion in fiscal 2022, $1.59 billion in 2023, $1.34 billion in 2024 and $1.27 billion in 2025. Net losses over those four years added up to about $537 million, the largest $207.1 million in fiscal 2022. In January 2023 Elizabeth Spaulding, then chief executive, agreed to step down, and Lake, by then executive chair, served as interim chief executive until Matt Baer joined in June 2023.

Where the company is now

Stitch Fix is a public company, NASDAQ: SFIX, with Baer as chief executive. In fiscal 2026 (the year to August 1, 2026) revenue grew 6.4% to $1.35 billion and the net loss from continuing operations was $12.6 million. Active clients numbered about 2.28 million, down 1.4% on the year. The company had about 4,240 full- and part-time employees, including 1,575 stylists, roughly a third of the stylist count it reported in 2020.

Stitch Fix Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status