An estimated thousands of shoppers and perusers visited the new Wayfair Outlet during its grand opening at Augusta Exchange, Thursday.
The new physical iteration of the famous e-commerce shop opened at 10 a.m., and by 5 p.m. was ready to replenish its stock. With an opening sale offering more than half off of the store’s online prices on furniture and décor, roughly one fifth of those who came to the store made purchases.
This is alongside a pre-launch, VIP “soft opening” event the outlet held, in which 200 shoppers were allowed to sign up online to shop the entire store before Thursday’s opening.
“I would say we probably had over 1,000 people come in that night,” said store manager Michelle Stoeckly, even though the 200 VIP shoppers were allowed to come in first. “We stayed open. We didn’t turn anyone away.”
The opening comes after three months of preparation, since the announcement Wayfair would be taking the former BuyBuy Baby location at Augusta Exchange.
Wayfair opened its first brick-and-mortar location, a 150,000 square-foot, large format store in Wilmette, Ill., early last year. Its outlet stores, however, span about seven states, now, including Georgia. The Augusta site’s closest neighboring outlet in Greensboro, N.C.
“They took a chance on us,” said Stoeckly about Wayfair electing to open its first Georgia outlet store in the Garden City. “We don’t have anything like it in the area, and everyone knows Wayfair, so they knew we’d get a good response.”
Wayfair Outlet Augusta is located at 242 Robert C. Daniels Jr. Parkway.
Skyler Andrews is a reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
