After word came that Gilt Groupe, a pioneering site that not only inspired similar startups, but is expected to go public, had laid off 10 percent of its staff, a question inevitably followed: Is this bad news for other players in the flash-sales and daily deals business, particularly those at the high end?

The answer is no, according to experts who spoke to Portfolio.com about where the daily deal model has been and where it seems to be headed. To sum up what happened on Friday, Gilt Groupe confirmed that it had let go 80 to 90 staffers and that it would be closing offices in its “secondary cities” including San Diego, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Dallas, to better focus on its core cities including New York (which is Gilt headquarters), Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Miami.

Gilt City, the company’s daily deal division, was hardest hit by the cuts, with its top exec, Nathan Richardson, set to leave after a transition period. The company’s CEO Kevin Ryan told AllThingsD that the cuts are designed to get the company to cash flow positive by the second quarter and profitable by the fourth quarter and that the hope is to do an initial public offering by the end of this year or in 2013.

Boyan Josic, CEO of Daily Deal Media, says that Gilt’s movement toward supporting the secondary markets through a centralized sales staff is a move that has become a “common theme these days,” with one example being kgb deals, which shifted some of its positions from an inside sales office in Wichita, Kansas, to outside sales positions.

“I think you'll see more and more models that are similar to Gilt’s because it puts the focus more on the product/service curation rather than the deal discount,” Josic said. “I feel that the merchants they work with are generally happy with their results, and those consumers are more likely to continue using a product or service that they like—unlike the consumers that are just looking for a deal that day on a pizza, bar, a product or service that’s more of a commodity.”

Unaiz Kabani, a data product manager for deal aggregator Yipit, says that the company's data show that higher-end deals are faring well.

“For each of the major players in the industry, we continue to see pricing trend upwards—deal sites are offering more and, just as much, selling more higher-priced deals,” Kabani said. “We have also seen increased attention to featuring quality merchants. In general, both these points speak to the potential of the higher-end daily deals market.”

So what do investor types now think? Jeff Sica, president and chief investment officer of SICA Wealth Management, an independent wealth manager based in Morristown, New Jersey, says investors are still hungry for deal sites.

“However, they have much lower expectations due to the performance of some recent deals like Groupon,” Sica said of the daily deal pioneer, whose stock price has fallen below its IPO price since it went public. “Gilt Groupe has taken the cues from some of the mistakes made by other recent deal sites, and their slowing their growth to sustainable level as a way to manage expectations makes sense.”

As for the question of going public, he says Gilt should avoid the “take the money and run” philosophy of most recent IPOs.

“They are in a better economic position than competitors, and cutting staff and managing costs before they go public makes sense, despite the PR nightmare they may face short term, if it puts them in a more stable position in the future,” Sica said.

He thinks the companies with flawed business models have created a bubble because their revenues are not going to bear out the “pie-in-the-sky projections” of future profits.

“The lack of barriers to entry will hurt [deal sites], and only the strong will survive,” Sica said, adding that he expects many daily deal players will disappear.