Wayfair is days from the long-planned opening of its first large-format store, a sprawling space in the Chicago suburbs that will add the home goods seller to the ranks of digital retailers delving into in-person shopping.
The e-commerce behemoth plans a Thursday grand opening for its 150,000-square-foot store at 3232 Lake Ave. in Wilmette, Illinois. That space is within the Edens Plaza shopping center along the Edens Expressway in the wealthy North Shore suburb.
Boston-based Wayfair’s opening will come more than two years after its plans for the first store first emerged publicly, and after years of other digital retailers such as Warby Parker, Untuckit and Casper leasing spaces to expand their brands. Some companies, including Amazon and Allbirds, have shut down stores after rapid expansions.
The Chicago-area store is expected to be the first of “a portfolio of large-format stores across the U.S.,” a spokesperson said in an email to CoStar News, although no other locations or timelines have been disclosed.
The company founded in 2002 already has eight smaller-format, specialized stores under the AllModern, Birch Lane and Joss & Main names. Those are in Massachusetts, Texas, Florida and Illinois.
Wayfair’s large-format store will have products in 19 departments, including a design studio where experts will provide home design advice, a mattress gallery, a showers and faucets section, and a restaurant called The Porch.
Its move into big stores comes after the company had $12 billion in net revenue last year, down almost 2% from the previous year.
Early this year, Wayfair announced plans to cut 13% of its global workforce, affecting about 1,650 employees. CEO Niraj Shah said in a statement at the time that Wayfair “went overboard in hiring” as online sales surged in 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic began, before falling in mid-2022.
Wayfair’s plans for the large store first emerged in early 2022. A few months later, Edens Plaza was sold to WS Development in a $110 million deal that was boosted significantly by the Wayfair deal. The sale by Newport Capital Partners was contingent on zoning approval for a redevelopment of the property including the new Wayfair big-box store.
Major changes to the shopping center came after a large Carson Pirie Scott department store closed before the pandemic began.