Wayfair Profiili
Wayfair Inc. operates as an online destination for the home.
The company, through its e-commerce platform, offers customers visually inspired browsing, merchandising, product discovery and prices for approximately thirty-three million products from 23,000 suppliers. It focuses on bringing its customers an experience that is at the forefront of shopping for the home online. The company’s customers span a range of demographics, with annual household income ranging from $25,000 to $250,000; and also includes business professionals. The company has built an online selection of furniture, decor, housewares and home improvement products.
The majority of the company’s products are shipped to customers directly from its suppliers with a proportion flowing through its own logistics network. This network consists of CastleGate and the Wayfair Delivery Network (WDN). The company also offers inbound services via CastleGate Forwarding (CGF). Its CastleGate facilities enable suppliers to forward-position their inventory in its warehouses, allowing it to offer delivery. Through WDN, the company could directly manage large parcel deliveries via consolidation centers, cross docks and last mile delivery facilities, which, alongside CastleGate, enables it to speed up deliveries. The company’s CGF services allow its suppliers to focus on inbound logistics, including through Asia-based product consolidation and port-to-door freight forwarding solutions. In addition to logistics, the company offers a range of supplemental media and merchandising services in the support of a selling experience for suppliers. Its customer service locations are staffed with approximately 4,900 trained sales and service employees located in the United States (U.S.) and Europe.
The company has an online selection of furniture, decor, housewares and home improvement products, with approximately thirty-three million products. It has built a portfolio of approximately 120 house brands, which offer a brand experience. For items shipped from the company’s CastleGate warehouses, it delivers various products to a majority of the U.S. population in two days or less.
The company’s mobile app also offers customers a way to shop for their home from their home using its ‘View in Room 3D’ augmented reality tool. It supports its customers' shopping journey from start to finish through everything from financing solutions to customer support.
The company sells products from approximately 23,000 suppliers, majority of which are small, family-run operations without major product brands. The company provides its suppliers with access to its major customer base, with 27.3 million active customers over the last twelve months.
Segments
The company operates through U.S. and International segments, including its businesses in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
U.S.
This segment primarily consists of amounts earned through product sales through the company’s family of sites in the U.S.
International
This segment primarily consists of amounts earned through product sales through the company’s international sites.
Sites and Brands
The company offers a family of sites, each with a brand identity that offers a tailored shopping experience and product selection to a different target audience, which include Wayfair, Joss & Main, AllModern, Birch Lane, and Perigold.
Wayfair represents a significant majority of the company’s net revenue and is the one of its sites that operates internationally, operating as Wayfair.ca in Canada, Wayfair.co.uk in the United Kingdom, and Wayfair.de in Germany.
On the company’s sites, it also features certain products under its house brands, such as Three Posts and Mercury Row. Through these house brands, which feature selections refined by style and price point, the company helps its customers navigate its product assortment to find items that match their needs.
‘Direct Retail’ sales include net revenue from customers generated through the family of sites and stores.
Growth Strategy
The key elements of the company's strategy are to continue to build its brands by delighting its customers; acquire new customers and increase repeat purchases from existing customers; invest in technology to further improve its customer and supplier experiences; grow certain categories where the company under-indexes the broader home goods market; increase delivery speed and improve the delivery experience for its customers through the continued build-out of its proprietary logistics network; continue to expand internationally; continue to execute its omni-channel strategy with the launch of physical retail stores across its family of brands; and opportunistically pursue strategic acquisitions.
Seasonality
The company’s business is affected by seasonality, which historically has resulted in higher sales volume during its fourth quarter, which ends December 31. However, various factors could alter seasonal patterns, including the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Beginning in mid-March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and the related responses disrupted the company’s usual seasonal patterns, resulting in higher sales volumes during the second and third fiscal quarters of 2020. As economies across the U.S. and the globe began to reopen with rising vaccination rates during the spring of 2021, spending patterns shifted as consumers moved back to experiential categories in a major fashion. The combination of these changes in consumer spending patterns and the global supply chain challenges, which also arose due to the COVID-19 pandemic, led to lower sales in the second half of fiscal year 2021 (year ended December 2021) as compared to the first.
Competition
The company’s competition includes furniture stores, big box retailers, department stores, specialty retailers and online retailers and marketplaces in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany, including:
Furniture Stores: American Freight, Ashley Furniture, Bob's Discount Furniture, Havertys, Raymour & Flanigan, and Rooms To Go.
Big Box Retailers: Bed Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, IKEA, Lowe's, Target and Walmart.
Department Stores: JCPenney, Macy's and Neiman Marcus.
Specialty Retailers: Arhaus, At Home, Container Store, Crate and Barrel, Design Within Reach, Ethan Allen, Floor & Decor, LL Flooring, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, Restoration Hardware, Room & Board, Serena & Lily, TJX Companies and Williams Sonoma.
Online Retailers and Marketplaces: Amazon, Build.com, Houzz, eBay, Etsy and Overstock.
International: Argos, Canadian Tire, Home24, John Lewis, Leon's, Made, Otto, Westwing, and XXXLutz.
History
Wayfair Inc. was founded in 2002.
