Retail

Retailer Wayfair Only Has 1 Store

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: April 19, 2024 7:05 am

Wayfair Inc. (NYSE: W) only has one store. The online furniture company is just about to open that Wayfair store. All of the company’s $12 billion in revenue last year came through e-commerce.

The location will have furniture, home decor, housewares, and home improvement products. The Wayfair store will cover 150,000 square feet in Edens Plaza in Wilmette, Illinois. The company says it will have merchandise for “any style space or budget.” It is not clear why Wayfair picked Wilmette, a town north of Chicago. (See the 16 best alternatives and affordable options to IKEA.)

The company is in trouble, and it is not clear how a single Wayfair store would help it. Revenue last year dropped 2% to $12 billion. The company remains crippled by losses. Last year, it lost $738 million, compared to a loss of $1.3 billion in the year before.

Based on Wayfair’s 2023 results, Niraj Shah, CEO, co-founder and co-chair of the board, made a comment that did not make sense:

Our efforts over 2023 led to large improvements in our core recipe across availability, speed and price competitiveness. These improvements were directly responsible for our robust share expansion throughout the year and for the step-up we saw in customer loyalty, including year-over-year growth in our active customer count by the fourth quarter.

None of his list of changes showed up at the top or bottom line.

So far this year, Wayfair stock is down 11% to about $55 a share, while the broader market is up 5%.

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