Dubai: United Arab Emirates online retailer Mizado.com has shuttered its website after only five months of operation in Dubai.

A software developer at the company, who declined to be identified, said that up to 150 workers may have been laid off at the Dubai-based company.

“The number being tossed around is that 150 people are now jobless. The company called me and said we are closing down, sorry about that,” the IT employee told Gulf News.

Mizado.com’s parent company Rocket Internet, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, did not disclose the numbers of laid-off workers when contacted by Gulf News yesterday.

However, Andreas Winiarski, head of Public Relations at Rocket Internet, said: “[The] Middle East is a very attractive market for Rocket Internet, with a proven track record. Currently, we are active with two ventures in the region: Mizado.com and Namshi.com which are both performing very well. To leverage economies of scale we have decided to focus our e-commerce activities under the umbrella of the stronger brand Namshi.com which has already proven to be the regional leader in fashion e-commerce.

With this new set-up, we are now better positioned than ever to continue our fast growth trajectory and emerge as the dominant e-commerce player in the Middle East.”

Namshi.com online retailer was launched in December 2011.

Meanwhile, on its Facebook page, Mizado posted a message on Monday noting: “We are currently undergoing a restructuring process and therefore have to cancel all pending orders.

“Of course, we are refunding all customers who have made a pre-payment. The refund will be issued by tomorrow at the latest and should be received within a week.”

A quick check on the Mizado.com website confirmed that the web page has been closed with a message, “we are sorry, Mizado is now under maintenance. We will be back soon.”

Employees wondered, however, why the company says it is only restructuring when it is laying off staff, said the workers.

“This is bad news for us, we just started our jobs,” the employee said .

The worker said he expects to be paid his full month’s salary for August but has not been informed of any severance settlement for workers.

Mizado customers, meanwhile, were not happy with the news of its website being offline and wondered aloud on online blog ksalue.blogspot.com whether they would see refunds from their credit card purchases of products that have not been delivered.

One anonymous tweeter posted: “I have checked with the bank for my transaction, Mizado is not claiming the amount... bank’s status for my transaction is ‘ON_HOLD’. Transactions will automatically be cancelled if not claimed by merchant within 21 days from the date of transaction. For goodness sake, I hope they will not claim the amount for goods they were not able to deliver.”

Mizado UAE offices in Emaar Gold and Diamond Park in Dubai could not be reached. Telephone directory services did not have a listing for either Mizado or Rocket Internet in Dubai.

Managing director of Marketing Mahmoud Fouz said in an online statement in August that online retail sales during Ramadan had shot up within the UAE.

The Mizado move, meanwhile, follows news reports that parent company Rocket Internet is shifting its regional focus in the Middle East and North Africa, reportedly laying off 400 workers in Turkey amid plans to sell other online retail sites it owns around the globe. Other news reports have Rocket Internet pulling back on China projects.

On its international website from Germany, Rocket Internet said it “created over 100 market leading companies in 40-plus countries, dozens of which have been exited successfully.”

It said that it operates a network of 25 international offices and that the company’s “primary focus is on building proven, transaction-based business models in the online and mobile space.”