Wayfair Retail Store, Natick, MA

Internet retailer Wayfair has opened its first-ever, full-service brick-and-mortar store at a mall in Natick, MA. The new venue, prototyped and designed by IA Interior Architects working closely with client teams, brings the Wayfair brand into the built retail environment for the first time, although there have been pop-up Wayfair stores in the past.

Here shoppers can browse, make purchases, or place orders for home delivery with the advantage of design advice from on-site Wayfair consultants. Exposed brick and custom millwork add a welcoming warmth.

Shoppers can even design a digital room with Wayfair goods, enter and experience it at full scale via virtual reality, and later log-in at home to adjust their design or make a purchase.

With no interior walls, a custom reconfigurable system of fixtures provides structure for curated furnishings vignettes and free-standing displays, offering ultimate flexibility and opportunity for Wayfair to reinvent its merchandising as needed. Custom wall displays are designed to snap in and out. There are no permanent fixtures at the perimeter walls or at the center of the store.

Custom wood clouds floating at the ceiling offer user-friendly lighting (track heads snap in/out manually), and additional accent lights can be hung from the clouds. Power sources throughout the space, hidden behind merchandising walls and strategically placed at floor cores, enable fully-flexible mobile points of sale, increased in number or relocated at will.

Movable partitions, hidden behind millwork doors, open and close the storefront.