Flash Sales Site Fab.com Raises $8 Million to Be a Step Up From Etsy

Fab.com, the flash sales site that sells a wide range of designer items — from household objects to jewelry and gadgets — has raised $8 million in a first round of capital.

The round was led by Menlo Ventures with several existing investors also participating, including First Round Capital, Baroda Ventures, the Washington Post Company, SoftTech VC, SV Angel, Zelkova Ventures, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s A Grade Investments. A partial list of the who’s who of angel investing also participated, including Kevin Rose, Jon Anderson, Don Baer, Josh Kushner, Dave Morgan, Ben Ling, and David Tisch. Fab.com’s co-founder and CEO Jason Goldberg also contributed.

Goldberg tells us that Fab.com will use the funds to grow the business by adding more designers and expanding the number of categories it offers. It will also be building more community and engagement features.

The New York-based company launched the site last month and has since signed up more than 350,000 people who place more than 1,000 orders a day. This month, the Web site is adding more than 5,000 new members a day.

“We’ve grown pretty quickly and pretty fast,” Goldberg said. “And now we are trying to expand our user base and the categories we are in. We believe there is a big vision behind this to be synonymous with design and have design affordable to everyone.”

He says they have the opportunity to be a bit like Etsy, which sells crafts made by individuals online, but for artists, who have more scale and can manufacture quantities on a larger basis.

Fab.com operates like other flash sales sites by offering a limited amount of inventory for a short period of time. In this case, Fab.com typically sells items for 72 hours at up to 70 percent off.

Fab.com was launched by Goldberg, formerly of XING AG, socialmedian, and Jobster; and CCO Bradford Shellhammer, who was a contributor to Dwell and formerly of Blu Dot and Design Within Reach.

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