Sony is planning to close 20 of the 31 extant Sony Store locations in the U.S. by the end of the year, the company announced today. This restructuring of Sony’s U.S. retail portfolio is part of company wide cost-cutting efforts that Sony announced earlier this month. That plan calls for 5,000 layoffs worldwide by the end of Sony’s 2014 fiscal year, which will conclude on March 31, 2015. Sony said today that approximately 1,000 of those individuals will be laid off by the end of 2014.
Sony announced a restructuring of its Sony Electronics division, resulting in the closure of 20 Sony Stores across the United States. The restructuring will affect approximately 1,000 employees “across all sites,” which Sony says will amount to a staff reduction of one-third by the end of the calendar year. Just 11 Sony Stores will remain open: five in California, three in New York, two in Florida and one in Texas. The news follows Sony’s decision to sell its Vaio PC brand earlier this month, announced among its third quarter fiscal 2013 results in which it saw a net profit of $257 million. At that time, Sony confirmed plans to cut a total of 5,000 jobs worldwide by the end of the 2014 fiscal year, 1,500 in Japan and 3,500 overseas. We added the list of the 20 Sony Store locations that are slated to close after the break.
