Niche e-Commerce: Blinds.com Sells More Than $100M of Window Covers

Much of the market may still be following the rise and fall of several social media stocks. There are, however, several other interesting stories and business cases of how traditional retailers have used the Internet successfully to make it big in the connected world. For instance, players like Blue Nile have hurt brick and mortar jewelers. Another such retailer is Houston-based Blinds.com, which has become the largest online window covering store in America.

Blinds.com’s Financials
Blinds.com began in 1986 as a standard mom-and-pop store under the name Laura’s Drapery. It was founded by Jay Steinfield and his late wife, Naomi. The couple launched their website in 1993, becoming the first in the industry to have an online presence. By 1996, they had turned the website into an online store-front and had received their first e-retail order.

Today, Blinds.com is the largest online window covering store in the country. It has covered more than a million windows a year over the past 16 years. The company is ranked No. 215 on the prestigious Internet Retailer 500 list. Buyers can visit their site to purchase several window treatments, including blinds made from different materials, fabric draperies, valances and several shutter and shade solutions. The company has a marketing team in place but relies heavily on word-of-mouth marketing. Sixty-one percent of customers are either repeat buyers or those referred to them by existing customers.

The company has kept its financial details, including performance and investment details, under tight wraps. However, it is no surprise that their revenues have grown rapidly over the last few years. In 1996, Blinds.com was earning a mere $500 a week in sales of blinds. When I spoke with Jay Steinfeld three years ago, he said they were earning more than $50 million a year. Today, analysts estimate that Blinds.com is on track to cross revenues of $100 million a year and is growing at a rate of nearly 40% annually.

Blinds.com’s Mobile Adoption
Besides adapting successfully from a traditional business to an online store, the company has also shown good results in the mobile space. Last year, it released an augmented reality window treatment shopping app that has enriched the shopping experience of customers. The Window Shopper app is available free for both iOS and Android based devices. The augmented reality feature lets a user take a photograph of the area he or she wants to drape then view available blind styles on to the photograph to see images of how the space would look with the treatment. The app lets users add preferred blind styles to a wish list, e-mail them, and even post them to social media networks to get input from their friends and connections. Users can also request free samples of their preferred blinds.

The app has received positive reviews from the market and within a few months of its launch last fall had seen more than 10,000 downloads. Blinds.com was hoping to get to that statistic by the summer of this year.

Blinds.com estimates that the windows blinds market in the country is worth $4 billion. However, price-sensitive consumers account for nearly $1 billion sales in the industry. Blinds.com is hoping to target that market. At an annual run rates of $100 million, it is still a relatively smaller player in the market relative to competitors like Home Depot, but its strong online presence has made it a force to reckon with.

I have long been a proponent of niche e-commerce, having covered story after story in that category. Blinds.com is a very good example of how compelling the opportunity continues to be.

This segment is a part in the series : Niche e-Commerce