Dirty Hands Conducts Layoffs As Part of Larger Restructuring

Dirty Hands, one of the CPG industry’s largest merchandising firms, laid off employees from across the company last week in a move to refocus its business on the natural channel.

“This wasn’t an easy decision. We are a people first business and always will be, which makes this decision even more difficult,” said Will Ahearn, CEO of Dirty Hands in an email to NOSH. “That said, our role in the industry is to support our brands, our people, our retailers, and our communities. We exist to help better-for-you products scale their dreams and get into more households. And there comes times where you have to make hard decisions that do affect people in order to strengthen your ability to fulfill your company’s mission.”

The company did not provide a headcount for its total number of employees before the recent layoffs, but Ahern told NOSH that 15% of the team was impacted. LinkedIn posts indicated that employees from a range of departments were affected by the restructuring, including field operations staff, reporting managers, regional sales managers and operations team members on both the broker and brand side. According to a post by a regional director of field services, the layoffs were made across tenure levels.

The primary reason for cutting staff stems from a change in strategy, Ahearn said.

Founded in 2013, Dirty Hands’ representatives make 4,000 retail visits per month to retailers in every major city across the country, according to its website, and is the leading natural food merchandising company active in Whole Foods, Sprouts, and top INFRA, NCG and natural independent retailers. The company works with retailers on behalf of brands to ensure proper merchandising, as well as to monitor ordering and stock levels.

Having long focused on the natural channel, this summer Dirty Hands expanded its reach to represent better-for-you brands sold in two conventional retailers.

Though the accounts saw modest growth, they “requir[ing] significant time and investment to stand up,” Ahearn said. Rather than choosing to increase efforts, it was time to pull back and retrench, he noted. It was already clear that the company had some redundancy in roles, he continued, but discontinuing its conventional retail efforts made addressing the issue even more pressing.

“We’ve been discussing how to evolve and streamline since the beginning of the year, which will, in essence, create a better service for our brands. With the increased economic uncertainty, we simply decided to accelerate our plans,” he said. “With the pausing of conventional, there was some consolidation of roles in the field and at a management level.”

Although some brands have also had to trim their budgets, Ahearn said, Dirty Hands is still seeing interest from new clients in the natural channel. As individual retailers make their own cuts, brands are looking to supplement the store-level support they previously received , he added.

“[The] lack of labor at stores creates daily issues that erode sales for brands,” said Ahearn.

The expansion into conventional isn’t totally off the table though. Dirty Hands hopes to once again offer its services in conventional retail by late 2023.

Many members of the CPG industry have posted job listings for affected employees on LinkedIn posts about the layoffs while others have essentially created makeshift job boards through their own posts.

“I respect Dirty Hands and the organization they have built and know this must have been an incredibly difficult decision for them to make.” wrote Max Baumann, CEO of fellow merchandising firm Basemakers. “If you are one of the team members who was laid off, please reach out to us at Basemakers – as we are hiring and always looking for great people to join our mission of helping build world class brands through world class sales capability.”