Entrepreneur of Indian-American origin, Niraj Shah attended an entrepreneurial class during his final semester at Cornell University, in 1995. A lesson which helped him build a multi-billion dollar e-commerce giant, Wayfair. Shah, 42, believes the class sparked a business plan that led to the founding of his first company together with Steve Conine, Spinners. "It ultimately became the foundation for starting and building several technology companies," Shah said.
Spinners, an IT and Web services company was later sold to global technology consulting firm iXL. In the acquisitional process, Shah became the chief operating officer of the latter, after which he took up the role of entrepreneur-in-residence at Greylock Partners. He came a long way, until he founded Wayfair in 2002. "In 2002, Steve Conine and I were analysing search trends and noticed there was a great deal of untapped opportunity in certain commerce categories," Shah said. He stated that around that time he and Conine were looking for the right opportunity, plasma TVs and surround sound were becoming popular and they felt countless consumers needed entertainment furniture to house the items.
"We decided to address that online need by creating a retail site called RacksandStands.com. From there we started to expand to other furniture categories one by one. That became the roots for what would become Wayfair.com." Things weren't smooth sailing for the partners. "People do not generally want the same home furnishings and décor as their neighbours. That means offering great selection alongside beautiful, inspiring imagery as well as support and expertise, which we provide through specialised service teams who really understand furniture and other home products, such as lighting and flooring," Shah said.
"When we hire smart, hard working, team-oriented and analytical people, we set ourselves up for our success. In fact, I've come to value these traits far more than job experience because these individuals are not burdened by the assumption that there's only one way to do something. They automatically think outside the box and that mindset is what drives innovation."
With a strong team, and founders who knew exactly what they wanted, Wayfair has now become one of the leading online retailers for home furnishings since its inception 14 years ago. Shah said that in 2002, they launched CSN Stores with a single website which grew into more than 250 standalone sites selling items from barstools to birdhouses. The successes of the hundreds of standalone sites opened the door to build a repeat customer base and raise awareness of the vast product offering under one umbrella, he added. So, in 2011, the entirety of the e-commerce sites under Shah and Conine was rebranded into a single destination known as Wayfair, which offers roughly 7 million products from more than 7,000 suppliers across five brands: Wayfair.com, AllModern, Birch Lane, DwellStudio and Joss & Main.
