Westwing is a sales channel that’s open to marketplace retailers and creators of fine, high-end homewares: furniture, decorative items, rugs and the like. Interestingly, it’s not just a beautifully curated website but also a dead trees magazine available to subscribers.
Take a look at the site and you’ll see what I mean. It’s exquisitely laid out and also provides lifestyle content and design tips as well as products. This shouldn’t be a surprise. The Westwing founder and creative director is Delia Fischer who was previously a journalist at ELLE and ELLE Decoration.
Existing brands utilising Westwing include Alessi, Le Creuset, Missoni Home, Rosenthal, Villeroy & Boch, Wedgwood. They say that they have 26.4 million users. It’s interesting to note that 90% of their shoppers are women with higher than average incomes and 50% of the shoppers have a monthly income of €3000 and above. In Germany, their biggest market and where the business is based, the average Westwing consumer spends more than €1700 on furnishings and decorative items per year and that’s twice the German average. In 2016, Westwing reportedly made total sales of £250 million and 82% of purchases were made by a returning customer.
Westwing operates in 14 countries including Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain and Switzerland. They claim to have 5000 active suppliers on their books. Westwing operates on a wholesale basis, with no commission, you supply your fabulous items and WestWing market and fulfil the goods. You just send your goods to one of their warehouses and they do the rest. (Unless they sell to Brazil or Russia, when you’ll need to fulfil them yourself.
As you’ll have gathered, this is not your average marketplace, it’s more of a supplier model and you’ll need to negotiate terms with Westwing directly. But it’s also worth noting that it’s a flourishing and interesting proposition for the right sellers. Have you heard of it or considered it? Maybe you’ve had dealings? We’d love to hear about your experiences.
(At Tamebay we’re writing about lesser known European marketplaces, as explained here, are there any you want us to cover?)
One Response
definitely interesting.
our stuff probably isnt high-end enough to merit their catalogue, but we’re definitely interested in new / differnt models.