How I Built Resilience: Niraj Shah and Steve Conine of Wayfair

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Despite the economic crisis, Wayfair has seen an 84 percent sales spike, leading them to profitability during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, co-founders Niraj Shah and Steve Conine have also dealt with unexpected challenges, from hundreds of layoffs in February to employee-staged protests outside Wayfair's office in June. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	Hey everyone and welcome to how I built this resilience edition.
0:31.0	On these episodes, we're talking with entrepreneurs and other business leaders about how they're thinking creatively during this disruptive time.
0:39.0	And today, we're going to hear from the co-founders of Wayfair, near a shop and Steve Kohnine.
0:44.0	We first feature Nierage and Steve on the show in April of 2018, and we just republished that episode, so it's near the top of your podcast queue.
0:53.0	You should check it out. They have an amazing story.
0:56.0	Anyway, since we talked to them in 2018, Wayfair has become profitable.
1:01.0	And despite anticipating huge challenges during this economic crisis, Wayfair has actually done pretty well as people start to beef up their home offices.
1:11.0	I spoke with Nierage and Steve about Wayfair's unexpected success during this economic crisis and how that's changed their business practices.
1:20.0	Let's start by taking us back to sort of March.
1:24.0	How did you begin to plan for presumably the worst at that point? What were some of the steps you took Nierage?
1:30.0	Yeah, so obviously when COVID started, there was a whole lot of uncertainty.
1:34.0	We kind of decided a few things. One was how do we keep our supply chain up and running so we can take care of our customers?
1:39.0	And so we implemented a lot of safety protocols. And that actually worked out very well because we were able to keep running and keep everyone healthy and safe.
1:46.0	Second thing is from a liquidity standpoint, we didn't know what was going to happen next. So we actually decided to raise money. So we raised $535 million in hindsight.
1:55.0	We didn't need, but at the time you don't exactly know what's going to happen.
1:58.0	And so we did that and we did that very quickly over a two week period.
	...

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