Sonos cuts 3% of staff across user experience, product teams

[NEW YORK] Sonos made cuts across its user experience, product and design teams, citing a need to streamline the organisation and operate more efficiently.

The move follows an earlier round of layoffs in April, when the Santa Barbara, California-based audio company eliminated numerous marketing positions in an effort to reshape that division.

A Sonos spokesperson confirmed the cuts and said that they included leadership positions. The reductions, which affect 3 per cent of the company’s workforce, “were about removing layers and streamlining our teams so that they can execute with greater autonomy and speed”, the representative said.

In a memo to employees seen by Bloomberg News, CEO Tom Conrad said the cuts were necessary to keep the brand nimble and competitive. “I want a Sonos that moves with more conviction and more velocity,” he wrote. “Fewer months in conference rooms. More prototypes in our labs. More decisions made and executed. More exceptional products in the world for our customers.”

Shares of Sonos pared earlier losses to trade 1.6 per cent lower.

The cuts to the user-experience team come at a time when the company has finally managed to emerge from a disastrous app update two years ago.

Earlier this month, Sonos began testing a redesigned version of its app that is intended to offer a more intuitive layout. Conrad described it as “not a new app, but a new way of navigating Sonos inside the app you already have”. The new version includes navigation tabs and an updated way to adjust the volume, among other tweaks.

In a Reddit post earlier this month, Conrad said, “the team has spent hundreds of hours over the past year watching real customers use the Sonos app, longtime owners and brand new ones alike”.

Sonos has continued to express confidence about its ongoing turnaround effort following a rocky period that began when the speaker maker rolled out an overhauled, bug-laden version of its mobile app in May 2024.

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The botched release damaged customer confidence in the company and its ecosystem of audio hardware and caused sales to decline. Sonos paused new product releases for over a year while it focused on correcting the software.

“We have changed the trajectory of the business,” Conrad said during the company’s most recent earnings call last month. “After a challenging period, Sonos is beginning to grow again, and we are seeing our progress show up across the company.”

Sonos projected fiscal third-quarter revenue of US$355 million to US$375 million, which would represent 3 to 9 per cent year-over-year growth.

The company’s most recent hardware products were the well-received Sonos Play wireless speaker and Era 100 SL home speaker. BLOOMBERG