SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A once fast-growing Syracuse company that recently transformed a downtown office into a fantastical world for its employees confirmed Monday it was laying off dozens of workers.

TCGPlayer, an online hub for trading card games, will lay off just under 15 percent of its workforce, the company told employees today.

Chedy Hampson, the company’s CEO, did not say exactly how many employees are being laid off. After the layoffs, the company will still employ more than 200 people, he said.

In a statement to Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard, Hampson said the company has become “overstaffed in many areas over the last few years."

“We took the extremely difficult step of separation with a number of our colleagues, who will each be receiving severance packages,” Hampson said. “This necessary step will ensure that we stay focused and can execute on only the most impactful projects.”

He said the company is prioritizing its software, its online marketplace and working with other playing card sites as it approaches 2020 and beyond. His statement did not say which departments were hardest-hit by the layoffs.

TCGplayer emerged in 2008 from a web design company, Ascension Web Design, that Hampson, a 1992 Corcoran High School graduate, and a business partner Ray Moore, of Baldwinsville, started in 1998. The two men are both avid gaming card players who met at a Magic: The Gathering tournament in Syracuse.

TCGplayer.com created an online marketplace for collectible gaming cards. The company cut a niche for itself by becoming the No. 1 online source for buying and selling trading cards, including for games like Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and HeroClix.

Since the company’s founding, it has quickly grown. It had about 80 employees in 2016, and 200 employees made the move earlier this year into the company’s fantastical headquarters in the downtown Galleries of Syracuse.

The renovation of the 44,000-square-foot headquarters included rooms decorated to look much like the Millennium Falcon ship of Star Wars fame, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry of the Harry Potter movies, a pirate ship and Mario Bros. games.

Here is Hampson’s statement to Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard:

As we approach 2020, TCGplayer set our objectives very clearly around delivering Point of Sale software into Brick & Mortar stores, improving our online Marketplace experience, and coordinating better interactions with online content sites. When we sat down to fully align our teams around achieving these objectives it became clear that attempting to perform work beyond these objectives would cause us to be unfocused and hurt our ability to execute, and as such, we have realized we have become overstaffed in many areas over the last few years. Today we took the extremely difficult step of separation with a number of our colleagues, who will each be receiving severance packages. This necessary step will ensure that we stay focused and can execute on only the most impactful projects. This step ensures that we will deliver collectible hobby industry-defining products throughout 2020 and beyond."

Thanks,

Chedy Hampson

CEO, TCGplayer.com