Fast Five Shorts | Buy Or Sell: Wayfair Muse?
In the latest edition of Omni Talk’s Retail Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Simbe, and Ocampo Capital Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga, along with special guest hosts from the A&M Consumer & Retail group David Brown and Lisa Collier discuss: If They're Buying Or Selling: Wayfair Muse
For the full episode head here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5GLcP12oeI
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Transcript
Wayfair has introduced its new AI powered tool, Muse, to inspire and personalize your home shopping experience.
Speaker A:According to a Wayfair press release, Muse is designed to give customers an easy way to find inspiration and ideas for their homes by transforming how customers discover, personalize and shop for their dream spaces.
Speaker A:Building on the success of Decorify, Wayfair's previous pilot application that allowed customers to select from a few preset styles to see how their space could be transformed, Muse takes it further to provide a trove of inspiration and ideas to build their aspirational home.
Speaker A:Didn't expect to see Trove dropped in today's Fast5.
Speaker A:Here's how it works.
Speaker A:You type in a style or a room you are looking for.
Speaker A: t can be as specific as Moody: Speaker A:Dan.
Speaker A:Or as generic as dining room.
Speaker A:As you browse the rich AI imagery, you can shop the recommended items in each Muse or add it to a collection to review.
Speaker A:Let me try to say that like a normal human being or add it to a collection to revisit later.
Speaker A:When you find a Muse that sparks your interest, you can easily explore other Muses and products that share the same vibe.
Speaker A:Once you save a Muse, you can then upload a photo of your space to apply the style to any room of your house and voila, you have a fully designed room.
Speaker A:Lisa, are you buying or selling Wayfair Muse?
Speaker B:I'm buying.
Speaker B:I think it is a great.
Speaker B:Here's what I love it because I think it is a great use of AI with the consumer in mind.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I mean the way I thought about it is I stepped back and said who doesn't want to dream?
Speaker B:Who doesn't want to be inspired?
Speaker B:And I think from a customer service like quality of customer consumer relationship, I think this thing that Wayfair is doing is pretty awesome.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:It's going to potentially inspire them to buy on their site.
Speaker B:So I do think it has conversion, but it's also just going to help the consumer in general that they can save it and come back to it and it allows the consumer to be somewhat creative themselves.
Speaker B:So I'm all for it.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I'm buying.
Speaker A:You are.
Speaker A:And are you buying?
Speaker A:I think you are Based on.
Speaker C:Oh my God, 100 I love when Lisa was talking.
Speaker A:You do?
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker C:Super.
Speaker C:It's super simple to use.
Speaker C:I use it.
Speaker C:Yeah, I did.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:I mean I looked up crazy search terms too like coastal Spanish modern and mid Midwest mid century modern and Midwestern coastal.
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean it wasn't Always perfect.
Speaker C:The results weren't always perfect, but the UX is brilliant.
Speaker C:Like, I can just hit.
Speaker C:Like, I, you know, I can so search those products.
Speaker C:I can put them to my cart right away.
Speaker C:But I think that the most brilliant point here, and Lisa hit on this too.
Speaker C:They're using AI to just adjust the imagery.
Speaker C:They're putting an ocean outside of the window in that setting and changing a few simple things, which is what AI should be used for to make me feel as a consumer.
Speaker C:Like, they're personalizing this experience to even the most crazy search terms that I might be putting in here.
Speaker C:And they're giving me a way to very easily click and buy.
Speaker C:So I think this.
Speaker C:I'm super excited.
Speaker C:I'm interviewing Fiona Tannet, the CTO at Wayfair at Shop Talk, and I cannot wait to talk to her just about, like, the evolution of this, because it really is quite a step up from what decorify was.
Speaker C:And now you're.
Speaker C:You're really.
Speaker C:It's really focused on inspiration and then providing that ease of use of getting to products.
Speaker C:So I love it.
Speaker A:We were all in on decorify last year, too, and I can't wait for you to talk to Fiona at Shop Dog.
Speaker A:It's gonna be awesome.
Speaker A:All right, Dave, I'm let you go next because, you know, I'm, I'm.
Speaker A:I'm in their camp and I don't.
Speaker A:I want to see where you stand before, because maybe I need the retort to try to convince you to come to our spot.
Speaker A:What's your thoughts here?
Speaker D:I have one foot in the camp.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:One foot.
Speaker D:Super cool.
Speaker D:I played with it yesterday.
Speaker D:I think that it's really well done, very well executed.
Speaker D:Yeah, we'll see how the whole software update thing works out.
Speaker D:You know, since you guys think that's a big issue going forward.
Speaker D:But, but here's my question, and you said something really interesting, kind of, what's the evolution of it?
Speaker D:And Wonder, you know, does eventually this become a revenue source and, you know, it becomes an interior design service, you know, is also pretty heavily tied into a lot of the online design services.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:You know, there are a referral from whether it's Joybird or Stucco or Heavenly or, you know, pick in one of them.
Speaker D:What are they thinking about this?
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah, that's what I thought too.
Speaker D:Like, you know, it's like, I'm.
Speaker D:I'm not sure.
Speaker D:You know, pissing off a bunch of partners is.
Speaker D:Is.
Speaker D:Is Retail Strategy 101.
Speaker D:Unless the evolution is I'm going to be a better version of that.
Speaker D:And, and I'm just taking it over.
Speaker D:So I think it's cool.
Speaker D:I think it's really well done.
Speaker D:I'm super curious about what the evolution of, is it going forward and how does it work in the broader ecosystem of, of interior design?
Speaker A:Yeah, that, that, that's exactly the points I had too, David.
Speaker A:Like, yeah, the impact's going to be on the interior designers, but that's what Wafers brand is too.
Speaker A:Wafer's brand is like basically like affordable design, you know, at the end of the day.
Speaker A:And so if you can use tech to do that, why not?
Speaker A:And that's the other point I'd make here, is because this, this is an example to me of also like, why Wayfair continues to win or hold its own within the home furnishing space.
Speaker A:Because it's, it uses, it constantly uses its tech to showcase its category, whereas Amazon has to use its tech to tap into everything that it provides.
Speaker A:But Wayfair's been smart about that and, and for that reason it's gotten a leg up on Target and Walmart over the years.
Speaker A:And it continues to take this approach, which is, which is a definitive approach.
Speaker A:I had coffee with, with Wayfair CEO back when I was running home furnishings at the Vidara in Las Vegas, and he told me that that's the way he thinks about the business.
Speaker A:He's going to continue to use tech to showcase the category of home furnishings.
Speaker A:And I think you're right.
Speaker A:There could be some fallout from this in the space, but consumers will gravitate towards it if they find it useful.
Speaker D:Yeah, it's easier.
Speaker D:Right, right, right.
Speaker D:Like, you know, here, sign a contract, you know, take a bunch of photos of my room like that.
Speaker D:It can be AI generated, et cetera.
Speaker D:So I think the future evolution is super interesting.
Speaker C:Well, and you, you still need the interior designers to pull from multiple sources.
Speaker C:Like the, the idea that you're going to get all of the things to out room from Wayfair is probably not true.
Speaker C:You might, you know, that's where the designers come in to help you like, you know, pick the right places to invest.
Speaker C:And the right places depends on your budget too though.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker D:Or does Wayfair become a bit of a marketplace in the future with kind of the service so that it will allow them to actually pull from other sites too.
Speaker C:Right, right.
