Wayfair Deploys AI and Influencers to Beat Furniture Slump

Artificial intelligence (AI) and influencers helped Wayfair outperform the home furnishings category during the first quarter, Niraj Shah, the company’s CEO, co-founder and co-chairman said during a Thursday (April 30) earnings call.

The home furnishings category was buffeted by weather disruptions early in the first quarter and a pullback in consumer spending due to rising energy and fuel prices later in the quarter, Shah said.

Those pressures led to the category being down in the low-single-digit range for the quarter, but Wayfair outperformed the market by a high-single-digit spread, he said.

According to a Thursday earnings release, Wayfair’s revenue was up 7.4% year over year, reaching $2.9 billion in the first quarter.

“We take confidence in knowing that whichever direction the macro turns, Wayfair will be a key share winner because our scale gives us the ability to build a customer experience that cannot be matched,” Shah said during the call.

Wayfair’s scale advantage in technology includes the ability to develop solutions that can be used in all the company’s geographic markets and continuously improve the customer experience.

“Nowhere is this more evident than in our rapid deployment of generative and agentic AI,” Shah said. “We’re not just experimenting with AI; we’re actively using it to widen our competitive moat.”

For example, Wayfair is using AI to translate its catalog into French for its customers in Quebec, and to autonomously enrich and correct product attribute details across its catalogs for customers in the United States and the United Kingdom.

“This kind of technological leverage allows us to use resources more efficiently while simultaneously delivering a richer and more intuitive shopping experience,” Shah said.

When it comes to marketing, Wayfair is now applying the marketing mix it uses in the U.S. to Canada and the U.K. That mix includes a greater share of marketing on platforms such as TikTok, connected TV and streaming audio rather than traditional channels.

In Canada, the company scaled its creator program from zero to more than 1,000 creators over the past year and gained tens of millions of views. This approach helps Wayfair adapt to local market trends.

“We can speak to and resonate directly with the consumer looking for inspiration for her home in the suburbs of London or the heart of Toronto,” Shah said.

The company also expanded its Wayfair Rewards loyalty program to Canada and the U.K. within the past few weeks and is already seeing rewards shoppers return more frequently.

“In the home category, a customer may only make a purchase a few times a year,” Shah said. “Our aim is to ensure that every time they think about their home, they think of Wayfair.”