The Boston Globe reports that US furniture e-commerce giant Wayfair announced on Wednesday that it will close its only offline standalone shop by 31 December this year.Wayfair's first and only offline standalone shop, in Boston, US, opens in August 2019 and is the company's attempt at brick-and-mortar retail.

Although this attempt at physical retailing has only lasted about a year, Jane Carpenter, spokesperson for Wayfair, says that the offline shop is also part of a successful attempt to indirectly increase consumer awareness of the Wayfair online catalogue by creating a direct and interactive connection with consumers.

And while traffic to retail outlets was generally down due to the epidemic, there was still "a significant number of enquiries" and "a very strong willingness to buy", giving Wayfair confidence in its ability to grow its physical retail business.

However, she adds, there are many challenges in doing business physically, and for a large e-commerce company like Wayfair, which generated US$9 billion in revenue last year, it is always a challenge to display representative merchandise in a shop that is less than 350 square metres.

Jane Carpenter said that it is inevitable that Wayfair will pilot the idea of operating a physical shop again in the future, but that the size of the shop will probably be larger.

In terms of offline shop operations, Wayfair is known to have briefly opened a couple of flash shops between 2018 and 2019. The company has also set up a direct-to-consumer outlet in one of its warehouse centres in Kentucky, but that outlet is currently on hold due to the outbreak.