“The furniture market was already moving online,” said Emily Miller, a partner at the management consulting firm Bain & Company. “Furniture market sales online have been growing almost 20 percent a year for the last couple of years, and that’s within a broader furniture market that’s only been growing about 2 to 3 percent.”

The challenge, however, is that “furniture is a big purchase that feels relatively risky,” Ms. Miller said. “For a lot of people, it’s something they do relatively infrequently and that makes the barrier to entry relatively high. It’s typically a slightly more consultative purchase.”