Wayfair’s Perigold bets on a new Houston store to grow its share of luxury furniture sales
It wasn’t a question of “if” furniture company Perigold would open a brick-and-mortar retail store. Rather, it was a matter of when, said the company’s global head, Rebecca Ginns.
“We spent the first few years of the business building across categories and across styles,” she said. “At this point, we believe we have a really solid offering, in terms of both the product and the services we offer, so it felt like the right moment to meet our customer in person.”
Perigold, founded in 2017 as an online luxury furniture marketplace under parent company Wayfair, opened its first brick-and-mortar showroom in Houston, Texas this week. The 20,000-square-foot flagship, located in a luxe shopping destination called Highland Village, boasts more than 5,000 products inside along with free design services.
Ginns said the timing was right because it had the benefit of parent company Wayfair’s own brick-and-mortar learnings, as well as scoring the right location in the booming Houston area. Wayfair opened its first store in the Chicago area in May 2024 after more than two decades of online-only sales. Next year, it will open its second in the Atlanta area, with a third planned for Yonkers, New York in 2027. A second Perigold showroom is slated to open in West Palm Beach later this year.
“Houston is a market that’s definitely growing. It’s a place where we already have a strong customer base, and it’s a hub for innovation and style,” she said.
Perigold sells more than 150 third-party brands, including established names like Bernhardt, Frette and Theodore Alexander. The showroom capitalizes on this with displays set up to look like real rooms based around a certain style, including areas fashioned by professional interior designers like Marie Flanigan, Julie Neill, Evan Millard and Jessica Davis.
For Perigold, the store is an opportunity to continue to grow its share of the luxury market, even as it remains underpinned by Wayfair’s logistics operations, like its delivery services. The company’s earnings don’t break out revenue by brand, but according to a recent investor presentation, Perigold does about two to three times the AOV as Wayfair and targets customers with household incomes of $175,000 or higher. The site received over 50 million visits in 2024 and counted over 200,000 new customers.
Ginns said she hopes to see Perigold’s showroom become a destination for people furnishing their homes and the broader design community in Houston. “We have pieces that are going to totally push how people think about design,” she said.
The store’s opening was paired with a kickoff dinner for local influencers and design pros at the posh La Colombe d’Or Hotel in the Museum District, replete with an assortment of Perigold’s high-end china and various glass and gold trimmings. The Highland Village showroom situates Perigold alongside other higher-end furniture tenants like Restoration Hardware, Design Within Reach and The Shade Store.
Inside the store, Ginns said, there’s a blend of small, liftable cash-and-carry items, as well as larger furniture that can be ordered from the nearest warehouse and arrive at the customer’s home within a week. Some items, like hardware, are organized by category. But many of the larger furniture pieces are set up in curated vignettes centered around certain aesthetics, brands or designers, a manifestation of Perigold’s identity as “a house of brands,” Ginns said. “We wanted to collaborate with a lot of different assortment partners to bring that to life in a physical environment.”
But getting this curation nailed down was a challenge in and itself. Like Wayfair, Perigold has an extensive catalog that requires figuring out not only best sellers in each category to showcase but also items that may inspire customers to look online for more goods. In setting up the vignettes, Ginns said the team started with data around the top items in its categories, then filtered those down to what was popular regionally, and then selected items based on design perspective and the collaborators involved.
Jackie Walker, retail experience strategy lead at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient, said Perigold’s move will help it deepen relationships with existing customers and attract new ones who fit its profile.
“Opening a physical store helps build brand awareness for people who may not be familiar with the brand,” she said. “Highland Village attracts a certain caliber and type of customer. If you look at the brands that are co-tenants there, there’s an element of positioning, and they’re expressing themselves very strongly in that regard.”
Walker, a Houston resident of over a decade, said it makes sense to see furniture brands coming to the area thanks to a growing real estate market in the area. The Houston Association of Realtors said home sales are up 6.8% in the area, and prices are easing as it becomes more of a buyer’s market. The average sale price is around $438,000. “If you’re opening a store catering toward designers, there’s no better market than one where a lot of homes are being built and model homes are being fully furnished,” she said.
For Perigold, establishing a brick-and-mortar showroom will likely drive a halo effect, and Ginns said she expects to see customers shop a blend of online and in-store. Wayfair, for its part, saw a 15% higher growth rate in Illinois compared to the national average after the first year of operations at its Chicago-area store.
But so far, Ginns said, the biggest payoff is seeing people react to the displays around the store and learn about Perigold for the first time.
“I love what we sell,” she said. “That might sound basic, but even when we launched the site online, what kept amazing me was the feedback. They’ve see it in 2D or 3D, and when it shows up, they’re surprised by how high-quality it really is.”