GoPro Cuts More Than 20% of Workforce, Changes Sales Strategy (bloomberg.com) 32
GoPro said it will cut more than 200 jobs and shift its sales strategy to market its cameras directly to consumers. It will also withdraw its 2020 financial guidance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bloomberg reports: The operational changes, staff reductions of more than 20% and cuts to office space will save $100 million in 2020, and reduce expenses next year to $250 million, the San Mateo, California-based company said Wednesday in a statement. GoPro said its shift to direct sales will mean a stronger focus on its website. The company said it still will use retail outlets for a small number of regions where such sales are preferred by consumers.
While withdrawing its forecast, GoPro said its expects to report first-quarter revenue of $119 million and an adjusted loss in the mid-30 cents a share. The company sold 700,000 cameras in the period, and said the staff and operational changes won't affect its 2020 product road map, which will include new devices and services.
While withdrawing its forecast, GoPro said its expects to report first-quarter revenue of $119 million and an adjusted loss in the mid-30 cents a share. The company sold 700,000 cameras in the period, and said the staff and operational changes won't affect its 2020 product road map, which will include new devices and services.
Simple matter of rebranding (Score:1)
In todays world, they just need to change the name...
to StayPro.
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HoPro, for cam girls.
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so wrong... and so worthy of mod points, if only I had any.
$500k (Score:2)
Someone please explain to me how exactly 200 people average $500,000 each? Those are some insanely high salaries for sales people!
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Still seems exceptionally expensive. There must be more to it than office space and salaries.
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A lot of companies have been forced to introduce home working when they were resistant to it before... Now many of these companies are coming to see the benefits of home working, and realising that a home working setup benefits both employee and employer.
And yeah internet access to offices has a cost, instead of the traditional huge office with its own server room many businesses can move to a more sensible model...
Infrastructure hosted in datacentres, either dedicated equipment or cloud provisioned dependi
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You need more sales then you think.
Products rarely sell themselves. Especially new ones that you need to convince people that your way is better.
Even if your product is popular there are going to be competition that may take your place.
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Still seems exceptionally expensive. There must be more to it than office space and salaries.
If they are like most companies today, this could also mean a decent amount of contractors on top of this. Contractors are typically not reported as part of layoffs as they are not laid-off, their contracts are just not renewed.
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So you think a salary is the total cost of employing someone. Don't start business yourself, you aren't cut out for it.
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Someone please explain to me how exactly 200 people average $500,000 each? Those are some insanely high salaries for sales people!
Salaries, support systems, HR management, corporate overhead from time wasted in meetings, desk space, IT support requirements, subsidies for benefits, the list goes on and on.
I get billed out internally to another department for $550/h. That's not my salary either, it's how much I *cost* the company. There's a difference.
The problem with GoPros... (Score:2)
You can get 85% of the capability and quality for 20% of the price from something like an SJCAM.
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It's a classic case of having a great product but then failing to keep innovating and building the next big thing.
That's the problem with paying CEOs millions, they don't give a shit about the long term. They can do a few years when things are good, rake in the bonuses and if it fails after that well it's not like someone is going to repossess their 2nd yacht.
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I don't think the primary market for GoPro is the occasional consumer buyer, but more corporate buyers and TV/movie/youtube productions.
Consumers will be best with a cheap competitor. Pros however have heavily invested in GoPro accessories, adapters and other things because they stick tons of cameras everywhere. They have a system in place and GoPros are typically predicable and have an ecosystem.
Add in TV and movie productions where they are used everywhere for stunts and stuff, where destroying one or sev
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That is still a risky strategy.
For example the demise of Sun Microsystems.
During the 1990s they were the big name for professional needing computer servers. Well built good quality, the One of the first 64bit platform allowing for expansion...
They were expensive though. So people started to switch to PC architecture that was much cheaper and things like Linux and Windows NT were good enough to do the work they really needed to do. But cheaper.
Sun was on its way out before Oracle bought them.
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I don't think the primary market for GoPro is the occasional consumer buyer, but more corporate buyers and TV/movie/youtube productions.
I know of several that have a GoPro. But I've never heard of anyone buying a second GoPro, unless they've managed to break the first one. It's more about the form factor that makes you want a dedicated action cam over a smartphone or P&S/dSLR but once you have it it's usually "good enough". I think they've tapped out the market that those who want one have one and you can buy them cheap second hand so they're just getting replacement sales. Probably also why they're not doing so well against clones. Tho
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Yeah, this is pretty much right.
I love my GoPro but I have only bought 2. A 3+ Black and a 4 Black. Only reason I bought a 4 Black was because my 3+ Black is sitting at the bottom of a lake after a water skiing mishap lol.
I have seen no compelling reason to upgrade to a 5, 6, 7, or 8 over my 4 yet.
I use it for downhill skiing, scuba diving, and various lake water sporting activities.
I also use it on vacation to record general videos when it's sometimes more convenient than using my $999 phone.
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In my experience those missing 15% somehow cover:
- batteries that last more than a very short time
- camera that can measure how much battery is left
- outdoors image quality
- indoors image quality
- camera reliably being able to output a file that is readable by the PC
The GoPro knock-offs I've tried are truly terrible. Next time I go somewhere worth filming with an action cam, I'll spend the extra £££ to rent a GoPro...
Software sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
I use a GoPro to capture my hare scramble motorcycle races. Their software sucks, which is surprising given their premium cost and how long they've been in business. At this point, the GoPro software is only useful for generating short videos of quick clips of a longer video. You can specify key moments, or let the software choose them for you, and it will cut a long video down into a few minute little snippet with some music in the background. Each update to the software has literally removed more and more functionality. I think that GoPro realizes that professional users care only about the hardware and use their own video editing suites to actually process the video, and casual users are too dumb to use a powerful video editor.
The cameras also split video into 4 GB chunks, for FAT32 support, and now they don't provide any good way of merging or managing. It's pretty important because the MP4s contain metrics, like GPS position, G forces, etc, embedded into the stream, that most basic video editing software doesn't support.
I had to go through a mind-boggling number of steps using 4 different pieces of software (one tool is command line only), to simply generate a full-length video (1.5 hours) of one of my races, and display the metrics in the video. None of that software at all was GoPro either.
Here's the final result [youtu.be] in case anyone cares.
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Retail is important (Score:2)
I've got a GoPro 4 something-something. I needed it for work, and I needed it that day, so I was happy to find a sports-type of shop in Louisville, Kentucky, that was a GoPro retailer. If I'd been able to order online, I would have found something else that can do that same job at a much lower price.