Wayfair: Dropshipping Unit Flow

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I'm eager to discuss your experience with Wayfair, especially since you're not a CastleGate user and you only use them as a platform to engage in dropshipping. The primary question of this interview, which we'll explore in detail, is to understand how it works. Essentially, I want to understand how, as a supplier, if you want to sell a single item, how does it move through the entire Wayfair network. As an initial question, it would be interesting to know how you first heard about Wayfair and why you decided to engage with them.

When selling to Wayfair, it's important to understand that you don't really sell to Wayfair. If you have a product line that is well-photographed and you follow their rules, they will list anyone's product. They operate as a marketplace. This is different from a curated e-commerce site, like Williams Sonoma, which selectively chooses what to list. Wayfair, on the other hand, will list anything you give them. They believe the customer should make the buying decision, not them.

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I'm eager to discuss your experience with Wayfair, especially since you're not a CastleGate user and you only use them as a platform to engage in dropshipping. The primary question of this interview, which we'll explore in detail, is to understand how it works. Essentially, I want to understand how, as a supplier, if you want to sell a single item, how does it move through the entire Wayfair network. As an initial question, it would be interesting to know how you first heard about Wayfair and why you decided to engage with them.

In all cases, everything that is shipped is determined and paid for by Wayfair. Your job as the supplier is to have it ready for pickup and properly labeled. Once it's picked up, it goes through their distribution channels. Sometimes it goes directly to the customer, depending on the item, and sometimes it goes to one of their warehouses to get cross-docked and shipped out. In most cases they will take it directly to the customer. They may pick it up on one of their trucks, or with an LTL carrier they've contracted with, or with FedEx or UPS. They use multiple different people.

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You approached them with your collection. How did you initiate contact?

E-commerce was new in 2003, and it wasn't a huge market. The initial wave of e-commerce businesses were selling at low margins and ended up losing money. They quickly realized that being online doesn't eliminate many of the costs associated with a traditional furniture store. CSN, now Wayfair, understood that they needed to align their margins with those of traditional furniture stores.

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