AllThingsD » Jason Goldberg

Fab.com Acquires FashionStake After Seven Months of Rapid Growth

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:00:29 +0000

Fab.com, a New York-based flash sales site known for selling home decor, apparel and other items from independent designers, has acquired FashionStake.

In the past seven months, Fab has grown rapidly, registering 1.65 million users, who have purchased 750,000 products.

It now plans to grow even faster, with the help of this acquisition.

Both companies have a similar mission: To bring independent artists and craftsmen, who make aesthetically appealing and sometimes out-of-the ordinary items, to a large marketplace.

Fab.com does this mostly for home decor, and New York-based FashionStake does it mostly for fashion and apparel. The sites have the flavor of a Gilt Groupe, which sells high-end fashion at a discount, except they offer more undiscovered brands, at more reasonable prices.

In a blog post, Fab CEO Jason Goldberg said FashionStake co-founders Vivian Weng and Daniel Gulati will join the Fab company.

Goldberg did not disclose terms of the deal, but it’s possible that he tapped into a large cash reserve, which includes a $40 million round of capital raised last month from Andreessen Horowitz and others.

FashionStake, which launched in September 2010, has received investments from a number of players, including Battery Ventures, Forerunner Ventures and Gilt Groupe co-founder Alexis Maybank.

Last year, FashionStake acquired Moxsie, another retailer of independent fashion.

Fast Company Pops Onto the Flash Sales Scene for Designer Edition

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:02:59 +0000

Fast Company is not just writing about U.S. design in its October edition, it is selling it.

As part of the issue’s theme — designer and hand-made items in the U.S. — Fast Company will offer nearly 100 handmade products, ranging from purses made from recycled leather to eyeglasses made from wood, that are featured in the article.

To pull it off, the magazine partnered with Fab.com, a New York-based flash sales site, which sells a wide range of items — including household objects, jewelry and gadgets — at discounts to registered members via email.

As part of the launch, Fab.com said it will debut a new feature on its site, called a “pop-up shop.” Physical pop-up shops are typically retail outlets that open for a limited period of time, and are based around a specific theme, like Christmas decorations or Halloween costumes.

Fab.com’s first pop-up shop will feature items from Fast Company’s design edition, and others — including one focused on T-shirts — are coming soon. These sales will typically last for a month, compared to other items, which are sold for only a day.

Fab’s founders — Jason Goldberg, who is CEO, and Bradford Shellhammer, who heads up design — were in Seattle recently to tell me about Fab’s partnership with Fast Company, the concept behind the pop-up shops and how the company is doing after launching only a couple of months ago.

Needless to say, Goldberg is happy with the progress, which includes signing up 600,000 members in a matter of weeks. (More details from them in the video below.)

Fast Company also said that it will be releasing an iPad app built by Socialistic. The app will feature video and audio from the designers and company owners who will tell the story behind some of their products. It will also have an augmented-reality feature, which will allow users to hold up the iPad to see how some of the household products being sold would look in their homes.

The iPad app will link to Fab.com, where the items will be on sale for 30 days.

[ See post to watch video ]

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

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:19:54 +0000

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.

Fab.com Launches as Deal Site for Designed (Not Designer) Goods

Drake Martinet — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:59:13 +0000

No longer just another pretty domain name, Fab.com launches today as a new deal site for designed goods.

Led by CEO Jason Goldberg, the site’s opening offers are on the sorts of things one might find at a design museum gift shop — fancy plastic chairs, fancy energy-saving light bulbs and fancy signed posters.

With future deals appearing to include personal electronics and apparel, Fab.com is entering a space currently dominated by Gilt Groupe, which offers deals on luxury goods in several categories through its Web site and apps.

In an email, Goldberg said the launch was made possible by a new round of seed funding that included the likes of Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade fund, SoftTechVC and First Round Capital, the Washington Post Company, and Baroda Ventures.

While the amount of the round was not disclosed, Goldberg added that Kutcher will advise the company.

Citibank's Snafu Over Gay Site Looks Familiar

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:40:13 +0000

Citibank apologized Thursday evening to a gay social-networking service that claimed bank employees had blocked its account for “objectionable content” on the site.

In a statement, the bank said it “sincerely apologizes to [Jason] Goldberg for this misunderstanding. This situation had nothing to do with the content of his web site and any comments by our staff to the contrary were incorrect; we are reviewing what happened.” But questions remain about the bank’s policies; Deal Journal reported last week that a business selling underwear online was denied a Citi account because of the bank’s concerns about content.

Mr. Goldberg, whose site fabulis recently received $625,000 in funding from investors led by The Washington Post Co. (WPO), said in an interview that he opened a business account with Citi and deposited that seed money into the account last month. Earlier this week, he said, he found himself unable to access the funds. He blogged about his experience, describing repeated conversations with Citibank staff in which he says they told him about a review process that found the content of his site was not in compliance with the bank’s policies.

Read the rest of this post on the original site