A year after receiving a $21.3 million loan from the Legault government, Montreal-based online retailer Ssense laid off 68 employees The newspaper.
The affected employees left the company last week, according to a document from the Ministry of Labor.
Ssense’s parent company, the Atallah Group, did not respond to numerous messages from Le Journal yesterday for explanations about the job cuts. The company has more than 1,700 employees, the vast majority in Quebec, according to the LinkedIn website.
Discreet help
Photo taken from Facebook
Rami Atallah.
Founded in 2003 by Palestinian brothers Rami, Firas and Bassel Atallah, Ssense is an online sales company specializing in big brand clothing, particularly luxury labels.
Photo from the HEC Montréal website
Firas Atallah
In 2021, the group told The New York Times that its annual sales reached $750 million (C$1 billion). Its main markets are the United States, Canada, China, Japan and Korea.
In January 2022, the Department of Commerce, led by Pierre Fitzgibbon, provided a $21.3 million loan to the Atallah Group. The aid was never publicly announced.
An initial $9.3 million installment of the loan was paid last year, another $8 million is due this year, and a final installment of $4 million is due expected next year.
The government could not say yesterday whether the remaining amounts will be paid out in view of the layoffs.
warehouse automation
Last May, a spokesman for the Economy Ministry, Jean-Pierre D’Auteuil, pointed out to the Journal that the $21.3 million in financial support was linked to investments aimed at making the “new distribution de l’entreprise” former headquarters of the shoe retailer Aldo in the Saint-Laurent district of Montreal.
The Atallah group also refused to answer the journal’s questions at the time.
According to its founders, Ssense is one of the world’s most popular e-commerce sites in its industry. It would accumulate around 100 million page views per month.
In June 2021, Atallah Group received an undated investment from the Chinese division of American investment firm Sequoia Capital, which valued the company at $5 billion.
According to the Quebec Business Register, the Atallah brothers are still the majority shareholders of the group, meaning that as of 2021, they were billionaires, at least on paper.
Sense in a nutshell
- Foundation, endowment : 2003
- Income (2021): 1 billion dollars
- Company value (2021): over 5 billion dollars
- Employees (2023): more than 1700
- Brands sold: over 500
- Main Markets: United States, Canada, China, Japan, Korea
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