Wayfair, the online home furnishing goods retailer has marked its debut in the stock market last week. The company went after the blockbuster listings of reputable businesses-Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Zalando SE. The Boston-based Wayfair is operating mostly online at websites like birchlane.com, jassandmain.com as well as dwelstudio.com and the brand currently houses 7 million products for its buyers to choose from.
It’s forecasted that the home goods market in the U.S. will grow from $233 billion in 2013 to $297 million 10 years from now according to Wayfair. Retailers operating online accounted for around 7% of the 2013 data.
The closest rival of Wayfair is Williams-Sonoma Inc. which is the company that operates PBteen.com and potterybarn.com. Other big competitors of the company include Group, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., Lowe’s Cos Inc. and a few other online sellers such as eBay and Amazon.com Inc.
In its debut, Wayfair offered 11 million of its common class A shares which valued around $319 million and in this offering, the company was able to sell a total of 10.5 million shares at the price of $29 per share which is a little above the forecasted range at the highest amount of $28 supposedly.
Just a little bit about the history of Wayfair, this company was previously named CSN Store LLC, which started its operations in 2002 as a seller of furniture on the internet and during that time, the company has been selling its items in many different websites like allbarstools.com and bedroomfurniture.com. It was only in 2011 that the name change to Wayfair came in with the consolidation of the company’s operations.
The revenue of the company significantly increased to 52% of its previous year’s data—a total income of $915.8 million and net losses of $15.5 million which is way lower than the $21 million losses recorded the year before.
In the New York Stock Exchange late morning trading, Wayfair’s shares were up to 22.9% at $35.65 per share which opened at $36. It hit its high for the day at $37.
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