Wayfair is part of an $800 billion-plus home goods market serving over 31 million active customers and counting. With these figures alone, it goes without saying that furniture merchants should set their sights on selling on Wayfair. 

In this resource guide we review how to sell on Wayfair, and offer information that will help you understand the value Wayfair provides its furniture merchants — as well as how you can optimize your listings for success. Let's get started!

What is Wayfair?

Wayfair’s mission is simple: offer a single site where people can find millions of products for every part of their homes. For customers, Wayfair is an effective, simple solution to browse home goods and make online purchases easy. With the help of rich content like product videos and customer reviews, consumers can feel confident making purchasing decisions. 

Wayfair enables sellers and distributors to advertise and sell their products. For many, what is appealing about Wayfair is its end-to-end solution. Wayfair handles all the marketing on your behalf, so you don’t have to worry about driving traffic or setting up promotions. In 2020 alone, Wayfair spent over $1.4 billion on advertising. While that doesn’t surpass Amazon’s $10.9 billion, Wayfair’s sole focus on home goods makes its advertising dollar more impactful for furniture sellers.

Does Wayfair make sense for your business? 

An important detail about Wayfair is that it white-labels 90% of its suppliers. That means that your company branding and logo won’t be visible on your Wayfair listing. Instead, Wayfair will list your SKUs under their range of in-house brands. 

Wayfair’s in-house brands 

Wayfair understands that not all furniture buyers are looking for the same design, price point, or aesthetic. That is why Wayfair uses a series of in-house brands to appeal to audiences with different budgets and tastes.

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For example, sub-brand Perigold focuses on the luxury market and offers a portfolio of prestigious home design brands, white-glove delivery benefits, and expert concierge service to ensure a top-of-the-line experience. 

The company’s other brands — Wayfair, Joss & Main, Birch Lane, and ALLMODERN — appeal to the mass market, covering a range of styles (think farmhouse, coastal, modern, etc.) with a more affordable price tag.

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Wayfair understands its customer base, and will automatically place your items under the best-suited brand to maximize your sales and results.

How does pricing work on Wayfair?

As an online retailer, Wayfair purchases your products at a wholesale cost. Then, they add a markup that sets the retail price on-site. Keep in mind, Wayfair is hyper-focused on driving value and the lowest prices possible for their customers. They even have automated systems that look at other retailers’ sites to compare pricing. They may suppress products that are deemed uncompetitive, so submit pricing for your SKUs fairly and strategically.

Outside of markup costs, those looking to sell on Wayfair should understand allowances. Allowances are the percentage rates that furniture merchants pay to retailers such as Wayfair, to help cover some ‘costs of doing business’. Allowances are set by Wayfair and are disclosed in the partner agreement. Some examples of the types of costs that allowances are meant to cover:

• Marketing/Advertising: As discussed at the beginning of the article, Wayfair invests some serious $ in advertising. Some of your channel allowances will help with this spending.
• Shipping: Because Wayfair pays for the handling and shipping, part of the allowance will go towards this necessity.
• Returns: With Wayfair handling returns you can expect allowance costs to go towards processing, freight, etc. 

What are the requirements to sell on Wayfair?

To get started on Wayfair you need to complete the application process and possess the ability to sell successfully. 

1. Apply to Wayfair Partner Home

As with any ecommerce business solution, you will need to submit an application form and include relevant business details for Wayfair to vet. The fields include: 

• Contact information. Your primary contact will be Wayfair's point person for your business.
• Business Information. Let Wayfair know your business name and location.
• Logistical Information. Tell Wayfair more about how your business operates (e.g. Can you accept returns?)
  

Once you submit your application to sell on Wayfair, they will follow up within 3-5 business days with next steps.

2. A team dedicated to managing your Wayfair account

Wayfair is not a “set it and forget it” type of partnership. While it provides its furniture merchants plenty of perks and programs to help, you will need a qualified individual or team to help you manage your account, including pricing, catalog management, promotions, and dropshipping. 

“Wayfair operates on the dropship model, so we send the customer order to your warehouse, then you pick, pack, and prepare to send the product directly to the end customer. Wayfair arranges and pays for 100% of the shipping cost.” - Wayfair FAQ‍

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3. Upload your catalog and optimize your listings 

Once your application is approved, and you are confident in your team and processes, it’s time to share your catalog with the millions of consumers who are shopping with Wayfair. 

You can start uploading your SKUs by accessing Wayfair's Extranet. This is the one-stop shop for sellers to manage product information and logistics.

Patience is key when uploading your SKUs. This can be a time consuming process to do properly. Wayfair wants to showcase products that convert, and they ask for a wide range of details and information about your products.

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Tips for success:

• It’s all about the details! Ensure you’re as descriptive as possible by filling in as much product information as you can, e.g. warranty, installation guides, weight and dimensions, etc.
  
• Wayfair will prioritize listings with more complete information. Much like Google wants to share accurate and relevant search results, Wayfair wants to show potential customers products that are legitimate and less likely to be returned.
• Upload a strong catalog with lots of products. You should aim to have at least 100 items showing a broad product base that will help you rank in the algorithm. 

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Upload high-quality images of your catalog

As you would expect, photos are imperative for selling on Wayfair. They are the first thing any customer will see on the search results page, and they are what entice potential customers to learn more about your products. Wayfair does not allow products to be published without images.

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Tips for success: 

• Upload at least five images per product, including detail shots, white background or silo images, and lifestyle pictures.
• High-resolution images are critical to positive customer perceptions. Images should be at least 1000x1000 pixels.

What tools does Wayfair provide its sellers?

Partners on Wayfair have a lot of tools available to them in the Accelerant Hub to help drive success for their sellers. Wayfair’s Accelerant Hub is the one-stop shop for sellers to manage pricing, promotional and marketing opportunities.

Using the tools below can make a big impact to improve clicks, site ranking, and conversion rates.

Promo Pricing Manager

Wayfair is a promotional-driven platform much like any other ecommerce website. It’s important that you be as active as possible in your promotional strategy.

‍Use the Promo Pricing Manager for big events such as Black Friday, Way Day, Cyber 5, and daily promotions. Wayfair can prioritize items for promotions and provide suggestions on the products they think will be most successful for a given promotion.

Sponsored Products

Wayfair’s Sponsored Products is a tool designed to help you promote and boost the visibility of your products.

Much like PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, campaigns are created and launched to help drive revenue on your products. It’s as simple as selecting the SKUs you want to be sponsored/advertised, and Wayfair will take care of featuring your products on relevant pages. It’s all performance-based - so you only pay when the product is clicked.

Sponsored Shops 

Much like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Shops is another Wayfair tool that helps drive exposure and revenue for your furniture business. Unlike Sponsored Products, however, Sponsored Shops gives you the ability to place an ad that directs customers to your entire catalog on top of a single-class browse page.

This feature helps you target customers at the beginning of their research journey, and gain share over the competition.

Review Programs 

Tried and True is a program designed to give new SKUs a boost on Wayfair by capturing five quality reviews fast. Its intent is to drive more views and purchases of your products.

✔️Fact: SKUs with five or more reviews receive 5x more product views than SKUs with fewer reviews.

Supplier Funded is a post-purchase rebate program, which gives sellers the opportunity to give out incentives to customers in exchange for a review.

✔️Fact: Customers are 25% more likely to leave a product review when there is an incentive attached. 

Ready to get started on Wayfair?⚡

Now that you know how to sell on Wayfair, it’s time to put your new learnings to work. Ecommerce sites like Wayfair take time and dedication to truly impact your bottom line. Do your part by optimizing your SKUs and using their provided tools.

Time or resources are tight? We're here to help. Book a call with us to talk about getting your catalog listed on Wayfair and other ecommerce channels!

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