Online furnishing and home decor giant Wayfair is bringing more jobs to the Brunswick Landing location it opened nearly two years ago — this time an additional 150.
The new jobs are in its sales and services center at 46 Burbank St., roles that include customer service consultants, business-to-business sales, supplier operations, merchandising operations and merchandising imagery.
Liz Graham, head of Wayfair’s sales and services, said there are approximately 400 employees at its Brunswick site now. The new positions will bring the jobs there to 550.
That surpasses the goal of 500 jobs the company announced it was bringing to Brunswick Landing in early 2016.
Wayfair now has more than 1,700 customer service agents in North America and Europe, a company announcement states, “empowered to handle issues independently and on the fly, marrying high-tech and human touch to aid the customer experience.”
Wayfair is located in a 50,000- square-foot building that formerly served as the Navy Exchange. Priority Real Estate Group purchased the building and completed a $5 million renovation to ready it for Wayfair.
More construction is taking place within an unoccupied part of the building, including new training rooms. Graham said the new jobs will correspond with the completion of this work.
There is not an exact date as to when the new jobs will be added, Graham said. She encourage prospective employees to apply on the company’s website.
Graham said she’s been very happy with the local talent the company has attracted, and is excited with the response since adding customer service jobs on site last October.
“We’ve been able to fill those classes with great talent,” she said, “so it’s been a very good experience for us.”
Employee engagement managers focus on wellness activities and community service projects at each location, making Wayfair a place people want to work and also be a good corporate citizen.
The overall company growth has been very strong, according to Graham. In 2017, Wayfair reported a total net revenue growth of 40 percent to $4.7 billion.
“We’ve been pleased and growing so that’s why we’re adding more employees and more seats,” Graham said.
Unique for a retailer its size, Wayfair keeps 100 percent of its customer service supports in-house.
“People shop for home in a very different way than batteries,” she said. “It has to do with emotion and style and a unique look, so I think people appreciate people on the other side of the phone who understand that and can relate. If they say they want southwest style, they know what that means.”
Graham was part of the team who went to see the Wayfair building at Brunswick Landing when the building was unoccupied, and it was hard to visualize it as the building it is today.
“It’s been really cool personally for me to witness the transformation in that space,” she said. “I know it was really important to the local economy to get that (former) base turned into a part of the local business landscape.”