Transcript
Introduction
Patrick
My guest today is Niraj Shah, the CEO and co-founder of Wayfair. Wayfair started life in 2002 as a collection of independent websites selling category-specific home furniture, but became a one-stop-shop for the home category in 2011 when at 500 million in sales the team consolidated their 240 websites into wayfair.com. Today, the business offers 22 million products from 16,000 suppliers to more than 30 million customers. During our conversation, we discuss how the competitive frontiers in e-commerce have changed, what it was like to build out a proprietary logistics operation, and what makes the home goods market more attractive than other physical goods markets. Please enjoy this great conversation with Niraj Shah.
Supply Chain Issues in 2021
Patrick
So, Niraj, we're going to talk a lot about Wayfair, of course, and its unique, interesting history and the landscape of the business today. But there's a couple bigger picture issues, one topical, one little less so that I'd love to begin with. Those two are the supply chain in the world today, in late 2021, and also sort of the physical goods market more generally speaking, and then we'll get to Wayfair. It's impossible not to ask you this question off the bat given your purview on the world, maybe just give me your impression of the world's supply chain issues today. This feels like something no one's ever thought about until now, and now everyone's thinking about it and talking about it.