Startup and Amazon challenger Jet.com has massively expanded its inventory of home furnishings, acquiring ecommerce seller Hayneedle for an undisclosed sum. The move adds millions of new items like patio furniture and pet supplies to a Jet.com inventory that is heavily skewed toward everyday consumer goods.
While it has a long way to go, this makes Jet.com more competitive with Amazon Prime, which offers millions of products across a range of categories, including home furnishings.
Jet.com wasn’t looking for an acquisition but found the deal to be opportunistic, CEO and founder Marc Lore told Fortune. He said Hayneedle will add a couple million SKUs of home goods, on top of the 800,000 or so Jet.com already offered.
“We think that mass merchants in general have a hard time in this high margin, long tail category called ‘home,’” he said. “It gives Jet an amazing boost in that category.”
Hayneedle will continue to operate as a subsidiary of Jet.com, and keep its 500 employees.
Mike O’Brien is Senior Editor of Multichannel Merchant