Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/84881
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEN RICHARDSON VIEW FROM THE TOP High-end furniture graces the lobby of the Joss & Main floor at Wayfair's offices. continued from page 51 Shah and Conine's story dates back to Cornell University, where they were both engineering majors and their freshman dorm rooms were three doors apart. In their final semester, they took an entrepreneurship class together and created a business plan for what would become their first company, Spinners, which built Internet software systems for " E-commerce 2.0 is about content, and it's about inspiration. —niraj shah " businesses. The company took off, and they chose Boston as Spinners's headquarters. "We needed to hire, and we knew there were a lot of young college students here," explains Conine. "We liked Manhattan, but neither of us wanted to live there." Headquarters was perhaps a glamorous term for their office space: a tiny one- Conine's engineering creations dot his desk. bedroom apartment near Massachusetts General Hospital. They worked in the living room, and Conine built separate sleeping quarters out of plywood. "All we did was sleep and work," he says. They sold Spinners to iXL Enterprises in 1998, and after working for iXL in separate cities, the two came back to Boston in search of a new idea. They landed on small Internet retailers that sold niche items such as bar stools and slow cookers. These businesses had average revenues of $100,000 to $200,000 a year, and many were growing at a clip of 30 percent annually. Seeing the potential in such targeted and low-cash-outlay businesses, they started their own niche home products site, which sold television stands and speaker racks. The choice of wasn't random: Stands and racks were some of the most searched-for products on Yahoo! at the time. The category had no obvious brick-and-mortar competitors, and it did not tread on Amazon's turf. The business was profitable from the start, and Shah and Conine swiftly expanded into other items, like water beds and ceiling fans. By 2007, Conine and Shah's company, items then called CSN The Wayfair team is a sporty one— they've won dozens of bowling tournaments. Stores, was a collection of 200 websites with sales of $202 million. But despite the rapid growth, customer surveys showed that the multi-site strategy was confusing to custom- ers. The partners felt a unifying brand was in order, hence the company repositioning last year. (The name Wayfair won in the end, according to Conine, because it's "short, soft, and easy to spell.") Wayfair is also making big investments in the website content and on the technology side of the business. The aim is to give customers faster delivery and provide shoppers with a better keyword search so they can more easily find what they're looking for. National TV commercials began this past September. "We want Wayfair to make your life a little easier," says Shah. "We are taking away some of the friction—making it more conve- nient for you to find what you want and what you need, and discover what you love." BC 52 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM WARMING *favorite room: HOUSE Conine: "My workshop at our place in Vermont is my favorite. It's got a mix of wood tools and power tools. I love being surrounded by tools." *best advice for entrepreneurs: Shah: "Pick an idea you love, and get out there and do it. Don't overanalyze it. Every business plan is going to have a problem." *personal decorating style: Conine: "Neither my wife nor I are die-hard interior designers. I like interesting mechanical touches. As far as an aesthetic, I like the clean minimalist look—modern polished concrete. But I've got three kids." *hardest part about starting a business: Shah: "When you have nothing it is hard to know where to start. We had sold our last business and were considering ideas, but we could find the flaws in everything. We finally decided we just needed to get started. We spent $14,000 to launch two sites: smarttechtoys.com (an electronic gadget website), and racksandstands.com. Smart Tech Toys was a dud, but Racks and Stands was a great success. The hardest part is getting started… It's good that we finally did that!"