Is Wayfair a bankruptcy risk long term?
Wayfair is famous for technical incompetence from this post https://www.teamblind.com/article/Technical-incompetence-at-Wayfair----is-there-anything-worse-43wn8iLT but could there be much worse risks on the horizon? I'm no investment banker but this company has never turned a profit and continues to burn cash like crazy. They are now taking on increasingly large amounts of debt to keep the good times rolling. Could technical incompetence actually be the last of their worries?
Blind
Not more risky than Uber and Airbnb from what I see
This was Amazon's model in the early days too. Took them 14 years to turn a profit and now look at them. ETA: Ok looks like Wayfair is 17... maybe they're still waiting on their moment. š
So the fella was identified and well-known for this post internally? What happened to him?
This is not true at all. I know the guy who wrote the original post . As of when I last worked there most of what he complained about I saw every day. Maybe it's improved somewhat since I left but it would take a huge cultural shift and a lot of change in engineering leadership to really turn things around
At the end of the day Wayfair sells furniture so no matter how awful the technology if the marketing, branding, customer service teams etc are executing well then it won't matter all that much. Revenues will continue to increase as online shopping continues to grow. The delivery network and the brand itself are quite valuable even if the profits won't be there for a while
Nice point well made, but I think the OPās question is āis the profit ever going to be thereā
Well I would say probably not without significant restructuring. If they reduced spending on customer acquisition and expansion into new markets and then got rid of 80% of the engineering departments they could be profitable pretty quickly. Might come to that if this recession ever happens
Wayfair's profitability can come from: (1) repeat customers and decreased ad spend via brand recognition and (2) better utilization and efficiencies in supply chain from additional growth.
In a sense, we are all a bankruptcy risk long term
Deep
no don't stop keep going I'm nearly there