

Fab.com does $1.3mm revenue in first 30 days - nateberkopec
http://betashop.com/post/7492370642/the-numbers-behind-fab-coms-first-30-days

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SeoxyS
Congratulations, that's an incredible success and I think you've been very
lucky. If you don't mind, I have a couple more questions:

* How good are the margins? How much of that is profit?

* How are you guys financed? VC or bootstrapped?

* How long have you been going at it? You launched 30 days ago, but I presume you've been working on it for quite a while before that.

* And lastly, how big is your _core_ team?

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betashop
Answers are as follows:

* Margins are really good, above 25%.

* We are backed by angels and VC's. I've also personally invested.

* We pivoted our business earlier this year. Before, we were a social network for gay people. In February we started anew as a design site. We built the site from March to May, then launched June 9th.

* Our team is: About 25 in development and UX, 20 on the business side - mostly in buying, production and merchandising.

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teadrinker
Hi Jason, nice site and congrats on the numbers. I consider the design
community to be tightly knit, and it seems you've tapped it well from your
viral conversion numbers. How do you see this business scaling up and avoiding
a ceiling in the near future once you saturate on that design community?

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betashop
Thanks. Appreciate the comments.

We agree that the social nature of the design community has really helped spur
our growth. Our viral coefficient is off the charts for an e-commerce site. A
lot of that has to do with people loving to share their latest design
inspiration/find.

We think this will scale up nicely because everyone aspires to have good
design. Not everyone is a design junky but everyone likes to have some design
in their life. Apple is a great example of a brand that has capitalized on
that. Also Target, Ikea, etc.

For many, design is a lifestyle. That will always be our core audience. But
for the mass consumer, making design objects approachable and affordable is a
huge market.

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betashop
Hey everyone. Jason Goldberg, CEO of Fab.com here. Happy to discuss and answer
any questions.

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rorrr
Went to your site. It's absolutely NOT clear what you're selling and why I
should care. You need a much better landing page.

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jonknee
What's not clear about this?

<http://fab.com/about-fab/>

I'm not a member, but from what I can tell you gain access to below retail
cost of high design products. Sort of a Woot for the design savvy set.

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vaksel
it's not really clear if it's design as in clothes or design as in couches
etc.

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jonknee
"Our entire reason for existing is to empower more and more people to embrace
great design. Great design is everywhere. It's that perfect pencil, your
favorite messenger bag, the headphones you use at the gym, the chair you're
sitting at while reading this, and the art on your walls. Great design exists
in every country in every product category and at every price point. We eat,
sleep, and breathe design."

Sounds like not clothes (which is tough for these types of sales anyways with
sizing and inevitable returns issues), but everything else. If you've been to
the MoMA store in NYC I expect there would be a lot of similarities, though
not at a discount.

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Postscapes
Congrats on the launch/pivot/revenue/etc

I have to say as a designer this site seems like a nice change of
pace....Looking at design porn all day that I can never afford can be a real
drag and a turn off from the industry in general.

Having a place to go where I can put my ooogling where my wallet is definitely
nice and the domain name (for whatever reasonably priced means) is very
sticky.

Are the order size limitations influenced more buy the capabilities of the
designer/distributors or on keeping with the Woot like discount feel?

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nodata
This is similar (I think) to the kunstsupermarkt (art supermarket) projects in
Germany and surrounding countries. Great to see more competition, and online
too.

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vaksel
it seems like similar to Groupon, they monetized an existing audience.

Seems like the recipe for success is to start off with an existing audience
that you can market to.

Similar to how Zuckerberg had all those emails prior to launching facebook.

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betashop
Actually, no. We only have had less than 5000 our of former social network
members sign up for the new Fab.com design site.

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funthree
How on earth did you get the word out to that many people? Virality? Please
explain...

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betashop
More than 50% of our members joined via viral invites -- from emailing
friends, twitter posts, facebook posts, etc.

We think it is because of the social tools we weaved into our site + the
social nature of design itself.

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yawza
What top 5 methods of paid acquisition worked best in getting so many members
so quickly.

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betashop
The ONLY effective method of paid acquisition for us thus far has been highly
targeted Facebook ads, and they have been extremely effective.

Facebook is far and away the most powerful way to target people socially based
on actual interests (likes) vs. just casual searches (goog).

