Key takeaways:
- Wayfair plans to open a 95,000-square-foot store at North Hills Village in Pittsburgh in 2027, its first Pennsylvania location.
- The store will feature a design studio, same-day take-home items and two-day delivery on larger purchases.
- Pittsburgh joins a growing list of planned openings that includes Denver, Westchester, Fort Lauderdale, Cincinnati and Princeton.
Wayfair’s brick-and-mortar expansion is heading to Pennsylvania. The Boston-based online home retailer announced Aug. 3 that it will open its first Pittsburgh store in 2027, adding another market to a physical retail push that began just two years ago.
The store will occupy 95,000 square feet at North Hills Village, a regional shopping center just outside of downtown Pittsburgh, according to a news release. Like Wayfair’s other large-format locations, it will organize merchandise by room and style and stock a curated selection of Wayfair Verified products, a subset of the company’s catalog that has passed quality and pricing audits. An on-site design studio will offer consultations on projects ranging from single-room refreshes to full-home renovations. Smaller items will be available to take home the same day, while larger purchases can be delivered in as little as two days.
“Pittsburgh is a region celebrated for its strong community roots and distinct architectural character, making it an incredibly exciting market for our physical retail expansion,” said Liza Lefkowski, VP of Merchandising and Stores at Wayfair, in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming local shoppers into a space where they can touch, feel and visualize products across the whole home category, helping them seamlessly bring their home projects to life.”
A Rapidly Growing Physical Footprint
Wayfair opened its first large-format store in Wilmette, Illinois in 2024, and now operates locations in Atlanta and Columbus, Ohio as well. Stores in Denver, Westchester, Fort Lauderdale, Cincinnati and Princeton are also in the pipeline.
Upcoming Wayfair-branded stores are expected to fall between 90,000 and 140,000 square feet. Pittsburgh’s planned 95,000-square-foot footprint puts it toward the smaller end of that range, closer in size to the Columbus store than the original 250,000-square-foot Wilmette flagship.
In an interview with Retail TouchPoints in June, Lefkowski said she was surprised to learn that more than half of in-store visitors have turned out to be customers who had never shopped Wayfair before.
“Shocking to me, if I’m being honest,” she said. “We went into stores with a national brand, relatively high awareness, and so I assumed that we had at least engaged with the majority of households in the U.S., but stores are telling us that’s not necessarily the case.”
The company has also had to rethink its inventory approach. Wayfair originally assumed shoppers would accept delivery for bulkier items, but customers pushed back.
“Customers want it on the shelf, they want to take it home that day,” Lefkowski said. “They don’t care if you can deliver it in 24 hours. They want it that day, and they’re willing to do the work.” Wayfair has since expanded its cash-and-carry selection, even if it has come at a cosmetic cost.
“You walk in our store, you’ll see a lot of brown boxes, because having pretty packaging is less important than being able to take it home that day,” Lefkowski said.
Wayfair reported first-quarter 2026 net revenue of $2.9 billion, up 7.4% year over year, with U.S. revenue rising 7.5% to $2.6 billion. Active customers reached 21.4 million, a 1.4% year-over-year increase. The company recorded a net loss of $105 million for the quarter, though non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA came in at $151 million, representing a 5.2% margin.
