BRUNSWICK

In only 12 weeks, the 52,000-square-foot former Navy exchange building was transformed into an open-style, window-filled office space for the Ecommerce giant Wayfair. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Tuesday in celebration.

The transformation that took place at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station was thanks to Topsham-based developer and investor Priority Real Estate Group.

The online home furnishing retailer, with headquarters in Boston, has taken the market by storm, growing exponentially since 2011. It employs 3,809 people globally. The new sales and operation facility opened June 13 at 46 Burbank Ave. at Brunswick Landing and will eventually house 500 employees.

Steve Conine, co-founder of Wayfair, started the company with Niraj Shah in his house in Boston in 2002.

“I would have never imagined I would be coming to something like this back 15 years ago when we got this started,” Conine told the hundreds of government officials, business owners and community members who gathered in the new building for the ceremony. “We are really excited to be in the Brunswick area.”

The company has located facilities in different parts in the U.S., but this is the first they’ve put on the East Coast.

Conine said Wayfair went public in October 2014. It did just over $2.25 billion in sales last year and about $747 million in sales this past quarter.

“We’re growing phenomenally quickly and we’re delivering an experience that we think really is changing the way people shop for their home,” he said. “We’re trying to become the best place to shop for home. I think online we are the best place to shop for home.”

Conine told The Times Record he was a civil engineer and his partner, Niraj Shah, was a mechanical engineer when the two graduated in 1995.

“We started building stuff on the commercial Internet right when it just came out,” he said. They built a lot of software in the late ’90s, gaining knowledge about software engineering and technology, which allowed them to create Wayfair.

He expects the company will continue to focus on improving the home shopping experience and not delve into other retail areas; to stray would dilute the experience, he said.

Wayfair continues to innovate. He’s working with a group, Wayfair Next, looking at “augmented reality and virtual reality as a way to supplement the shopping experience.”

For example, there are newer phones with viewers so you can drag and drop pieces into your living room and visualize what a new couch would look like there.

Most people buying furniture still say they’re going to a store.

“I think over the next five years, the opportunity is for us to close that gap, to get to where you’d say, ‘No, I’d rather just go online,’” he said. “I think we can get it so it’s easier to shop for your home from your home.”

Wayfair decided early on to manage its sales and service domestically with teams it knows well, which is critical to the customer experience. Then it’s a question of where to base them.

“I think we’ve looked for areas of the country where they have a good talent pool, they have hard working ambitious people; they have a group that would identify with our customers, who look like our customers a lot of the time,” Conine said.

Their Utah location was a former military base as well, Conine said. Those types of sites are a good fit for Wayfair, since it requires lot of square footage and parking.

Paul Drappi, the Brunswick site director for Wayfair, started with the company back in 2003. He said nearly 70 people have already been hired and are training and working at Wayfair. The company will be hiring every month as it ramps up, he said. They’ve hit all their hiring targets. How fast they hire up to 500 employees depends on the growth and needs of the company.

“Given Wayfair is everything for the home, I think that it’s fitting that I actually interviewed in Steve’s living room,” he said during the ceremony. “I was fortunate enough to grow with the company and into last year, I was running our sales and service organization with teams in Utah, Boston and Ireland.”

Drappi’s wife was born and raised in Brownville and attended Bowdoin College, so both were happy to move to Brunswick.

Wayfair does well with interior design, hospitality, property management and contractors, Drappi said. Wayfair can support these businesses so well in purchasing needs that they can focus on what makes them successful and continue to grow.

In Brunswick, “The talent that we have access to, the work ethic, is phenomenal,” Drappi said.

John Eldridge, Brunswick’s town manager, said the opening of the facility marks another milestone in the redevelopment of the former Brunswick Naval Air Station and the great work done by the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority.

There were several conversations about culture and what Wayfair was looking for, and all along the way it sounded like a great fit for Brunswick, Eldridge said.

He added, “You have indeed, to borrow a tagline, just what we need.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com

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• THE ONLINE home furnishing retailer has its headquarters in Boston. It employs 3,809 people globally. The new sales and operation facility opened June 13 at 46 Burbank Ave. at Brunswick Landing and will eventually house 500 employees.