Wayfair Plans 86,000 Sq Ft Cherry Hill Store for 2028

Wayfair said on Oct. 7 it plans an 86,000-square-foot store in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, opening in late 2028, its 11th store and its second in the state.

If you run a high-ticket store in furniture, outdoor, home or any category Wayfair sells, this is a read on where your biggest online competitor is putting money: physical showrooms, in front of shoppers who have never ordered from it. According to management on the company’s second-quarter call, more than half of the customers in Wayfair stores are new to its customer file, and store prices match online. That is awareness spending aimed at the same buyers your Shopping campaigns chase, and it will matter to Ecommerce Paradise readers in the metros where Wayfair is building.

Below: what Wayfair announced, the rollout behind it and the numbers management has and has not shared, my read on what showrooms do to a high-ticket dropshipping store, and five moves to make now. If you are new to the model, start with my guide to what high-ticket dropshipping is.

Wayfair is spending to win the customer before your ad ever shows. Spend your first dollars on the foundation and form your LLC with Northwest Registered Agent, the best LLC formation service for ecommerce owners. Plaintiffs and regulators look to the address on a public filing first, and a registered agent address keeps your home off it. Form your LLC with Northwest →

Wayfair Cherry Hill Store: 86,000 Sq Ft, Opening Late 2028

Wayfair announced the store on Oct. 7 on its corporate news site. It is a single-level, large-format store of about 86,000 square feet at Market Place at Garden State Park, which Real Estate NJ describes as a mixed-use development on the former racetrack site. The company expects it to open in late 2028.

Per the announcement, shoppers will be able to browse Wayfair Verified items, use free design services and get help with home projects, and many items can be bought and taken home. The Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported the news on Oct. 8, lists Home Depot and Wegmans among the neighbors in the same development.

Cherry Hill is the second planned New Jersey location. Real Estate NJ reported on Oct. 8 that a 135,000-square-foot store at Nassau Park Pavilion near Princeton is expected to open in 2027. An unnamed Wayfair representative told the outlet, “We continue to see strong customer demand in New Jersey and the greater Philadelphia area.”

CEO Niraj Shah gave the strategic reason to the Inquirer. The stores, he said, aim to get shoppers to spend more with Wayfair. “Part of the story is one of awareness,” Shah said, arguing that a visit exposes shoppers to categories and products they did not know Wayfair sold. The Inquirer also reported that Wayfair booked about $11 billion in U.S. net revenue last year.

The announcement comes a day after Wayfair expanded its Klarna 0% APR offer to six months, which I covered in my breakdown of the Klarna move. None of the three reports I read on Cherry Hill gave an investment figure, a sales target or a hiring number for the store.

Wayfair Store Rollout: Three Open, Eight Announced

Cherry Hill sits at the end of a long list. Wayfair opened its first large-format store in Wilmette, Illinois, in 2024, at 150,000 square feet, per the Inquirer. Atlanta followed in March 2026. On the second-quarter call, according to the transcript, management said Columbus opened in early summer, Denver opens this fall, and leases are signed for five 2027 openings: Westchester, Fort Lauderdale, Cincinnati, Princeton and Pittsburgh. Altamonte Springs, Florida, and Cherry Hill complete the 11. Wayfair’s luxury arm Perigold has two stores of its own, in Houston and West Palm Beach.

The economics, per that call, are the part to read closely. Management said stores sell at the same prices as online, so gross margin is similar. Advertising cost as a share of revenue is much lower in stores than online, store labor lands in a different line, and suppliers own the inventory sitting in the stores. Capital spending covers the build-out and runs in the low single digits as a percentage of revenue, including logistics and capitalized labor. CFO Kate Gulliver called the margins “very healthy” but said fuller store economics would come once there is more data from the three open stores.

On customers, management said more than 50% of shoppers in Wayfair stores are new to the customer file, and that about 20% of Perigold store staff are trained designers who offer free design services. Store average order values are higher than online, management said. For scale, Wayfair’s overall average order value in the quarter was $332, up 1.2% from a year earlier. Net revenue was $3.5 billion, up 7.5%, U.S. revenue was $3.1 billion, up 8.7%, and advertising ran at 11.1% of net revenue, per the same transcript.

Here is the counterpoint, and it matters. Management did not quantify any lift in online sales near the stores. Shah described the effects as early, noting Wayfair is present in only three small trade areas relative to the U.S. market. That is the same gap that existed in December 2024, when Business of Home reported that Shah was “quite happy with the halo effect” of the Wilmette store but released no figures, and the column questioned whether the halo would generate cash. Nearly two years later, the public evidence for a sales lift is still a CEO’s comfort level.

One detail from that 2024 piece carries over to what I’d watch: the Wilmette store collected email addresses from in-person shoppers, which Wayfair can use to track later ordering. A showroom is also a list-building machine.

What Wayfair Showrooms Mean for High-Ticket Furniture Sellers

My read is that Cherry Hill changes nothing in your ad account this week and a lot in how I’d plan 2027 and 2028 in the metros Wayfair is entering.

Start with what the stores are for. Management’s own numbers say they are an acquisition channel with lower advertising cost than the web. Every shopper who walks in, gets a design consult and ends up in the customer file is someone Wayfair can reach by email without bidding in an auction. For a store like yours, that shifts the marginal shopper in a showroom metro away from your Shopping ad and toward a retailer that already has their email.

Run hypothetical math, and treat it as hypothetical. Say your store books $50,000 a month in orders from the Philadelphia metro at a 20% gross margin. If showroom awareness pulls 5% of those orders to Wayfair, you lose $2,500 in revenue and $500 in gross profit a month, about $6,000 a year. That is small. The bigger exposure sits on the ad side: on a $10,000 monthly Shopping budget, a 10% rise in cost per click for the same traffic is $1,000 a month. Neither number is reported, both are invented for illustration, and your own metro data is what counts.

Now the part that should calm you down. Wayfair’s average order was $332 last quarter. Your buyer is spending $1,500 to $10,000 on a hot tub, a power recliner, an outdoor kitchen or a mobility scooter, and that buyer still researches for weeks and picks up the phone. Showrooms favor the low-to-mid ticket, where a shopper can touch a sofa, and I don’t expect a Cherry Hill store to move a $6,000 considered purchase on its own. One quarter of store data is also not a trend. My read is to treat the lift as unproven until management gives a number.

The real pressure point is the consultative sale. Wayfair is staffing designers and offering free design help, and that is the thing small high-ticket stores have always done by phone. The edge of the consultative sale is no longer exclusive to the little guy. My guide to high-ticket sales follow-up covers how to keep that advantage. I’d also put a phone number and a human next to every big-ticket product on your Shopify store.

Price parity is the other lesson. If Wayfair sells at the same price in store and online, you cannot win on a lower sticker price from a name-brand supplier, and in authorized-dealer categories you usually cannot discount anyway because of MAP. You win on depth, on brands Wayfair does not carry, and on service. That is why I keep pointing people to the high-ticket niches list and to narrow categories where a generalist’s showroom does not reach. If you already have a consumer brand in mind, my walk-through on picking a high-ticket niche from a consumer brand shows how to test it.

Store presentation matters more as shoppers compare you with a showroom they just visited. A theme built for large catalogs and rich product pages, like Superstore, helps your site feel like a place with real inventory and real people behind it. Track the effect with Semrush, which shows you how your category keywords and branded queries move over time.

Timing is the last piece. A late-2028 opening is two years out, so Cherry Hill is not an emergency. The metros to watch first are the ones where Wayfair stores are already open or signed: Atlanta, Columbus, Denver and the 2027 list. If your orders cluster there, build your baseline now. I broke down the broader furniture picture in my note on flat furniture sales in June, and showrooms make a flat market more competitive, not less.

Most store owners reading this do not want to rebuild their store alone while a retailer with $3.5 billion in quarterly revenue moves into their metro. That is what my turnkey done-for-you service exists for: a high-ticket store built around authorized-dealer suppliers, phone sales and a conversion-ready storefront from day one.

Showrooms raise the bar on every store in the metro. Want my team to scale the store you already have before Wayfair arrives? See the scaling service →

Five Moves to Make Before Wayfair Opens in Your Market

None of these cost much, and all of them pay off whether Wayfair’s showroom effect turns out big or small. Here are the five I’d do, in order:

Pull a geographic baseline. In Google Ads, segment your Shopping campaigns by metro for the last 90 days and record revenue, cost per click and impression share for Philadelphia, Atlanta, Columbus and Denver. Without a baseline you cannot separate a showroom effect from seasonality, and my guide to turning Google Shopping clicks into sales shows what to fix when clicks do not convert.
Watch your own margin by order. Showrooms pressure your ad cost first, so you need to know the real profit on each order, not an average. A bookkeeping tool such as Finaloop that ties ad spend, shipping and COGS to each sale makes it visible in minutes.
Capture email at the first touch. Wayfair’s stores build a list, so your site should too. Offer a free design consult or a spec sheet in exchange for an email address inside Klaviyo, and send a three-email follow-up that ends with your phone number.
Put a human on the sale. Display your phone number sitewide, answer it, and route chat and email through a helpdesk like Gorgias so no inquiry sits overnight. If you take payments on big carts, review my chargeback prevention guide too.
Lock your supplier terms. Ask each supplier in writing which dealers they authorize in showroom metros and confirm MAP policy. If you need more authorized sources, the Inventory Source directory is a place to start, and if you want a second set of eyes on your Shopping account, book a call at my discovery page.

Frequently Asked Questions

When will the Wayfair Cherry Hill store open?
Wayfair says late 2028. Its Princeton-area store is expected in 2027, according to Real Estate NJ.

How many stores does Wayfair have today?
Three large-format stores are open, in Wilmette, Atlanta and Columbus, per the Q2 call. Denver is planned for this fall, and Cherry Hill would be the 11th overall.

Does Wayfair charge different prices in its stores?
No, according to management on the Q2 call: stores sell at the same prices as online. That means price is not where a showroom beats you, and my guide on the hard truths of high-ticket dropshipping explains where margins actually come from.

Will Wayfair’s stores hurt my dropshipping store’s sales?
Nobody knows yet. Management has not quantified any online sales lift near its stores, so treat the effect as unproven and measure your own metro data. Start with the baseline in step one above.

Is high-ticket dropshipping still worth starting?
Yes, if you pick a category where service and brand depth matter more than showroom reach. Grab my free high-ticket niches list first. Then read everything you need to launch a high-ticket dropshipping business in 2026.

How do I handle big and bulky delivery when Wayfair lets shoppers take items home?
You compete on delivery communication. Send tracking updates with AfterShip. Then understand the freight market behind your carriers, which I covered in my post on C.H. Robinson buying RXO.

Not sure where your store stands against a Wayfair showroom? Get 1-on-1 coaching to fix your high-ticket store before 2027. Get the coaching details →

I’ll keep watching Wayfair’s rollout and report the next time management puts a number on the showroom effect. Subscribe to the YouTube channel for daily breakdowns. More breaking news coming through the day.

If this was useful, these go deeper:

Trevor Fenner

Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.