Wayfair partners with home services start-up Porch to compete with Amazon

Online home furnishings retailer Wayfair Inc. is partnering with Seattle-based home services platform Porch.com to offer home installation and assembly services to its customers.

Through this collaboration, Wayfair is directly competing with Amazon, which launched its own home-services unit last year, as well as Google Home Service Ads, and Angie’s List. While Wayfair does not provide a full range of service professionals (such as plumbers and roofers) like other online home service offerings, it should be able to capture a share of post-purchase revenue that was previously going elsewhere.

Through the Porch retail solution, Wayfair.com shoppers who need help with tasks such as furniture assembly and installation of products such as lighting and plumbing will be able to purchase those services at checkout and set an appointment with a Porch professional.

Porch will provide Wayfair.com customers home services that are available to add on to select product purchases. By adding installation or assembly services to their shopping cart, customers will be then be connected to Porch professionals to complete their project. All service providers booked through Wayfair.com will be local to the customer’s geographic area and guaranteed by Porch.com.

The partnership is available to Wayfair customers starting in 15 markets, including Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Chicago.

“At Wayfair, we pride ourselves on a customer service-driven retail experience, and with this Porch.com partnership, we are able to offer services that further enhance the shopping experience and make home decorating and renovation easier for our customers, ” said Steve Oblak, senior VP president and general manager, Wayfair. “Porch is ideally positioned to deliver quality home installation services through their ever expanding network of background-checked and guaranteed professionals and we look forward to delighting our customers with this enhanced offering.”

In addition to obtaining a new revenue stream without having to actually create or manage its own online network of home service providers, making these types of convenient services available to its customers may serve to boost repeat business. In the fourth quarter, repeat customers represented 54% of Wayfair’s total orders, while the number of repeat orders grew 96%.