Conine: Wayfair created an ethics group for orders after employee walkouts
Steve Conine · How I Built Resilience: Niraj Shah and Steve Conine of Wayfair · Aug 29, 2020 · at 17:55
Wayfair co-founder Steve Conine discusses organizational changes made in response to internal employee protests over sales to migrant detention facilities.
0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 8.5s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Coming out of that, I mean, we created an orders perspective group and we've really did a lot of soul searching as a company to really think about, okay, how do we think about who do we sell to?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Steve Conine
Conine: If an entrepreneur cannot sell, they lack a viable idea
“You got to start with a sale, and if you can't sell anything, you don't have an idea, and so, you know, after kind of validating that, I guess, we sort of said it's time to walk away from this one.”
Conine: Consumer brands must prepare for social media narrative hijacking
“Anyone who's building a big brand is going to have to be aware that their brand can be used to amplify messages. And that is going to be something they have to contend with and think about and learn how to navigate.”
Conine saw his paper net worth hit $27M at 24, then zero
“I remember I had this Merrill statement that says I was worth twenty seven million when I was probably like a 24 year old. And I remember thinking I'm all set. And then, you know, six months later it was basically back down to zero.”
Conine: Wayfair launched Racksandstands.com with zero inventory risk via drop-shipping
“So we'd buy out of their inventory, so we had no inventory risk, so it was all drop-shipped out of distributors.”
Steve Conine: 30-to-45-day supplier terms enabled Wayfair to self-fund
“It's been, from that day, early years on, it runs a positive cash cycle, so, you know, customers would pay us right away, and we didn't have to pay suppliers for 30 to 45 days, and so you had this kind of natural cash cushion and so, yes, it was, you know, it …”