Wayfair, a leading home goods brand, achieved success with its federated GraphQL architecture by breaking down its monolithic PHP application into domain-oriented microservices and implementing a unified schema using Apollo Federation. The company developed a product mindset to build community, establish governance, and learn how to approach technical challenges when supporting suppliers, partners, customers, and internal developers. Key principles for GraphQL adoption include being patient, knowing your users, meeting in the middle with senior leaders, and setting clear expectations. Wayfair's success was driven by its ability to educate its users, invest in stakeholder relationships, and set clear expectations, ultimately leading to a graph that sees 220 million requests a day from 80 different subgraphs and a community of approximately 500 users.