Dive Brief:
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E-commerce furniture retailer Wayfair Thursday reported that sales grew 85.5% in 2015, noting increases in new customers and repeat sales that boosted Q4 and the full year’s results.
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Fourth quarter direct-to-consumer sales on the company’s sites rose 97.8% to $685.6 million, from $346.7 million year over year. Full year 2015 sales on those sites rose 85.5% to $2.04 billion, up from $1.10 billion year over year.
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The company also earns revenue through ads on its sites and from sales through other retailers, but 92.7% of Q4 total revenue and 91.1% of full-year revenue come from direct sales. Full-year reported revenue of $2.25 billion was up 70.5% from $1.32 billion year over year. Thanks in part to strong holiday sales, Q4 revenue increased 81.1% to $739.8 million from $408.6 million year over year.
Dive Insight:
Wayfair benefited greatly from strong holiday sales and its repeat-customer number is especially noteworthy. Fourth quarter orders from repeat customers rose 96% year over year, accounting for 54.3% of total orders, up from 50.3% year over year. In all of 2015, repeat customers placed 5 million orders, up 92.3% year over year.
“We continue to grow both our new customer base and our repeat business with an exceptional shopping experience that redefines what is possible in home retail,” Wayfair co-founder-CEO Niraj Shah said in a statement.
The company added almost 770,000 new customers in Q4, too, the most in any quarter so far.
Those enviable statistics were thanks to the company’s own data analytics platform, Robert W. Baird & Co. retail analyst Colin Sebastian, analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., wrote last week, Internet Retailer reports.
“Wayfair’s favorable repeat customer dynamic is due, in part, to a proprietary data analytics platform that creates a personalized customer shopping experience,” Sebastian wrote in a note to investors. “For instance, outbound email content and prioritization of products are varied based on a user’s prior engagement, purchase history and demographic information. Wayfair sends more than 1 million different permutations of outbound emails on a daily basis, with improving personalization resulting in a 15% increase in email open rates.”
