Insight
Shah: Winning commodity retail does not guarantee success in home goods
“If you're in any of these other categories, certainly there's a big business there, but that's effectively the business that the Walmarts and the Amazons and the Targets and the Costcos, they're all in that business, selling the same exact items to everybody. …”
Assertion Supported
Shah defends 2019 controversial mattress sale to border refugee shelter nonprofit
“It was actually mattresses sold to a non-profit, a that operates refugee shelters all over the world, in Africa and in the United States and Europe. And they were actually operating three shelters along the southern border.”
Disclosure
Shah: Wayfair avoids corporate stances on issues lacking broad employee consensus
“There are other opinions that I have personally that I don't know that the company should take a stand on because frankly, there's two sides to a lot of topics that in our mind, there is not just one side that reflects everyone's reasonable views. And so one o…”
Insight
Shah: Fashion and home retail are uniquely driven by massive selection
“There's only a couple categories where a huge selection, ah, is really a key piece, where visual and aesthetic considerations are very paramount, where people want unique items, and the two are really fashion and home.”
Insight
Shah: Novel products require literal marketing before creative branding
“One thing we've seen over the years, sometimes when something is novel, the best way to communicate it is to be literal. You know, on the front of it, just saying, you know, add 16 ounces of water, and, you know, your chicken stock's ready to go, or add 32 oun…”
Insight
Shah: Founders should avoid raising VC if bootstrapping can work
“There's a lot of prestige in raising money, but the truth is you'd rather not raise money if you can get to the next level without it.
And so even if that means you might move a little slower, often that's a better decision.
And when the time is right to raise…”
Disclosure
Shah: Wayfair bootstrapped for 10 years via drop-shipping before raising equity
“The big use of money that we were able to avoid in our case is we didn't buy the inventory, and instead we drop ship the orders from suppliers using their open stock inventory.
So we didn't buy the item until we had already sold it.
That's what let us kind of …”
Assertion Supported
Shah: Wayfair hit 84% growth and massive profitability during COVID-19
“All of a sudden the growth came in at 84% and we were massively profitable.”
Assertion Supported
Shah: Online furniture grew during 2008 despite a 30% industry crash
“In the Great Depression, it shrunk 35% from the top to the bottom. In the financial crisis, it actually shrunk, the furniture industry shrunk by 30%, three-zero, and so it was really devastating. What was interesting, though, is online, except for an immediate…”
Insight
Shah: Launching companies in downturns reduces competition and builds operational resilience
“The right time to start something is often the time that seems the least obvious. So for example, we started this business, which is an e-commerce business in 2002. Right after the dot-com crash, right after e-commerce was viewed as a bit of a fool's errand by…”
Assertion Supported
Shah: Wayfair grew from $700K in 2002 to $27M in 2004
“Well, 2002 was our first year. We did about 700,000. 2000 three was our second year. I think we did about seven million. And then the following year, 2004, I think we did twenty seven million.”
Assertion Supported
Shah: US segment is 90% of Wayfair and profitable for five quarters
“In our case, the United States has been profitable. You know, if you look, read our financials and we break out the adjusted EBITDA for the US and international. Yeah. So US is 90% of our business and that's been profitable for the last five quarters.”
Assertion Supported
Shah: Wayfair operates a 2,500-person tech team and 25M sq ft logistics network
“We have enough scale to have, you know, a 2500 person technology team, and we have enough scale to have A twenty-five million square foot logistics network that's warehouses and transportation delivery operations.”
Assertion Supported
Shah: Wayfair spends over $1B annually on advertising
“The fact that we spend over a billion dollars on advertising a year.”
Disclosure
Shah: Wayfair raised $535M in two weeks during early pandemic uncertainty
“Second thing is, from a liquidity standpoint, we didn't know what was going to happen next, so we actually decided to raise money, so we raised five hundred thirty-five million dollars. In hindsight, we didn't need, but at the time, you don't exactly know what…”
Assertion Supported
Shah: Wayfair bootstrapped profitably for a decade before raising venture capital
“And so we were profitable for the first decade plus of the business. But then when we raised money to build up the Wayfair brand, then we're losing money.”
Assertion Supported
Shah: Wayfair's $15B run rate is under 2% of the furniture market
“Depending on what number you want to take the run rate of, you know, we're at 1314, fifteen billion dollars in annual revenue, but that compares to an end market that's eight hundred billion dollars, so we're still less than two percent of the end market.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Shah: TV and speaker stands were top 100 product searches in 2002
“In those days, Yahoo, on Yahoo search, you could type in terms and it would tell you how many searches a month there were for that item. And on some of the product comparison sites, they would tell you their top hundred categories. And so both of those terms w…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shah: Racksandstands.com reached $250,000 in monthly sales by December 2002
“In December of 2002, we did about 250,000 dollars in sales in the category.”
Disclosure
Shah: Wayfair took VC in 2011 because brand consolidation exceeded self-funding
“The challenge became, in 2011, we believe the big opportunity to continue the trajectory and to really capture the big opportunity, we needed to build a brand. And the amount of capital we thought to go through that migration and to build a brand that it would…”
