Property ManagementOnline Researcher Gomez Cuts Staff
Gomez, an e-commerce research and
consulting firm, has laid off about 35 of
its 152 employees to cope with a slowdown in business as the economy has
cooled.
``It"s a new environment with a new revenue
picture,"" said Julio Gomez, co-founder and chief executive of the Waltham,
Mass. ``The company can"t grow as much in this environment as it did
previously. . . . So we are cutting expenses.""
James Fox, Gomez"s chief financial officer, said most of the cuts were in
the research, sales and consulting operations focused on the retail, travel
and health sectors of e-commerce. Gomez, which made a name for itself by
ranking online brokers and financial services on the Web, had expanded
aggressively into other e-commerce categories over the past 12 to 18 months.
But now, Fox said, the firm is returning to its roots, concentrating mostly
on financial services.
Despite the company"s concentration on online commerce, Gomez maintains his
firm had few dot-com clients and is not suffering
because of the dot-com shakeout, according to a company press release.
Gomez was founded in May 1997 by Julio Gomez and John Robb, two Forrester
Research analysts, and Alexander Stein, co-founder of FarSight Financial
Services, an online brokerage firm sold to Merrill Lynch.
The firm makes money by directing shoppers
who visit its Gomez.com Web site to other sites, by selling its e-commerce
research and providing consulting services to corporate clients, and by
tracking Web-site performance measurements -- like download times -- for
clients.
The company has suffered some criticism from the press because it makes
money from consulting services to corporate clients which may or may not
receive higher rankings on the company"s "scorecards," as a result.