Wayfair CEO and co-founder Niraj Shah has announced to the business his intent to exit the German market, effective today, and to continue its focus on operations and investments in Canada, the UK and Ireland.
"I regret that this decision impacts our employees in Germany," he states. "This is not a decision made lightly, and we recognise the profound impact it has on our team members and their families."
Niraj writes that Germany has been an important part of Wayfair's journey for the past 15 years, serving as one of its original entry markets into Europe, alongside the UK.
"Over the years our success in the UK outpaced our success in Germany, as we were able to develop a household brand in the UK, and grow our market share there, all while developing strong unit economics," he continues.
"Our Germany efforts lagged behind, but we set out to close that gap over the last year. Since Covid, and in particular over the past year, we have made meaningful progress in Germany, thanks to the work of many of you directly involved in the market. However, despite these efforts, scaling our market share and improving our unit economics in the German market has proven challenging due to factors such as the weak macroeconomic conditions for our category in Germany, the lower maturity of our offering, our current brand awareness, and our limited scale.
"In our recent assessment, we concluded that achieving market-leading growth in Germany still remained a long and costly endeavour, and one that is increasingly lagging the potential return we see in other areas. To ensure we align our resources with initiatives that can deliver the greatest impact, we made the difficult but necessary decision to reallocate efforts to areas with strong long-term potential where our current efforts are showing great progress.
"We will continue to focus on operations and investments in our international markets – Canada, the UK, and Ireland, where we have meaningful market share and which we believe hold significant potential to replicate the success we’ve achieved in the US."
