Wayfair is hopping on the physical location trend

Wayfair, the online home goods retailer that at one point was the center of a child-trafficking conspiracy, announced it’s opening its first brick-and-mortar location. The 150,000-square-foot megastore, located near Chicago, is slated to open May 23.

Only shopping online? Soooo 2010s. Wayfair, which currently has a market cap of $8.3 billion, follows other direct-to-consumer brands that have opened physical locations after establishing sizable online customer bases, including Warby Parker, Figs, Casper, Glossier, and Everlane.

• The reality: E-commerce retail sales spiked during Covid, but have hovered around 15% of total retail sales since 2020. Meaning ~85% of all retail purchases still happen offline.

Retail is back

New store openings largely outpaced closures in the early 2010s – but that changed in 2017. CNBC reports that ~8,000 retail storefronts were shuttered and only ~5,000 new ones opened that year.

This trend continued for five years. Then, in 2022, it pulled an Uno reverse card: more physical stores were opened than closed, resulting in 1,575 net new openings. There were 307 net new openings in 2023, and there have already been 521 net new openings in 2024 (as of May 10).

🏬 Bottom line: No matter how far tech has evolved, some things – like actually testing out a mattress or trying on shoes to see how they fit – are better done in person.