Wayfair is using the power of artificial intelligence to make finding furniture a little easier.
The Boston ecommerce company announced on Tuesday that it has added a visual search feature that lets customers take or upload a photo and find products that look similar. The "Search with Photo" feature, which is available on Wayfair's website, checks images across the company's selection of more than 8 million products.
Steve Conine, co-founder and co-chairman at Wayfair, said the feature uses machine learning and computer vision techniques to make it easier for customers to find products that look similar to items at the home or elsewhere. The visual image search feature is among a number of new ways Wayfair is using emerging technologies to make furniture shopping better. Last year, the company introduced virtual reality and augmented reality apps that came out of its Wayfair Next team.
Wayfair's stock price reached an all-time high last week after the company reported better-than-expected earnings for its first quarter. The company's stock price is now $61.09 a share, which gives the company a nearly $5 billion market cap and is about a 57 percent increase over the company's stock price a year ago.
The company's stock has taken a couple hits this year in reaction to news that Amazon is planning to make a bigger push into the furniture market, but its strong Q1 earnings last week seemed to ease the minds of investors. Niraj Shah, Wayfair's CEO and co-founder, recently told the Wall Street Journal he is not too concerned about Amazon because the company has already been working in the furniture space and providing customer support is a difficult task.
