Fab three transitions face closure: Unsustainable patterns, corporate management turmoil

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"fab, formerly known as Fabulis's gay social networking site, set Yelp reviews, Foursquare sign-in, Groupon Group buys in one, and then transformed into a flash-purchase website. 」

Fab appears to have been transformed three times: from the gay social networking site, transformation to the Flash purchase site, to the full price of electricity, and then today's life creative designers, personalized recommendation platform. Fab has more than half of the customers are repeat customers, they buy the fab products, they will actively browse and purchase products in the website. Fab often says its goal is to become "the world's leading creative designer of life."

But only for the first time in three transitions, the two-step, almost simultaneous transformation, like poison, has put Fab in at least half a year in the lurch: the Flash-buy model is unsustainable, the founders ' style is too tough, the management is turbulent, and the company's internal, albeit well treated, is very low morale.

There are even internal sources that Fab is ready to close the site.

Break and Stand

The so-called flash purchase, is timed to buy, performance for "Daily Specials", "time-limited" and other activities, this concept since the July 2004 Woot.com online began to become popular, to the second half of 2006, Flash purchase site more than 100, November 2008, 17-month-old group buy site G Roupon valued 1.35 billion dollars.

Fab was founded in June 2011, the month began to profit, the site before the online replication virus marketing methods to launch the invitation to register the mechanism: "As long as you invite 3 friends to join can have the right to enter, the invitation to 10 will be able to obtain 30 points of discount, 25-bit can be 50 points, 50-bit can be obtained 6 months free shipping. 」

Fab is focused on quality design, not on other flash sites, and the FAB team believes that user experience, social networking is the foundation of the site-and that people are satisfied that there will be sales.

One months after the Web site, Fab registered membership reached 350,000, and in a round of financing to obtain 8 million U.S. dollars. At the end of 2011, Fab received $40 million in the B-round financing.

In the 2013 C round of financing, Fab has won 105 million and 15 million U.S. dollars, Tencent has also participated. Fab acquired Massivkonzept, a custom home company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, in April 2013, trying to sell offline. At the end of July 2013 and early August, Fab received 10 million D-round investments and 5 million dollars in additional investments.

Transition is a turning point

In July 2013, one months after the 150 million-dollar D-round, the FAB Berlin headquarters laid off 150 people, and CEO Jason Goldberg announced that Fab had begun a transformation in post, Goldberg a personalized recommendation and completely abandoned the flash-buy model.

The layoffs have shattered morale. Goldberg's decision to cut jobs in Europe did not take into account U.S. business conditions, which has left many employees transferred from the United States to Europe shortly after they were transferred back to the United States, and were fired in a few months.

This seems to be the beginning of fab tragedy, and since then the FAB has been almost a negative message.

According to a number of fab current and former employees, the high pressure has led to the consequences of a continuous change of management. The Fab exit executives include former chief marketing officers as well as human resources, communications, purchasing and logistics supervisors. Goldberg said that in the rapidly growing start-up companies, the flow of personnel was natural and the level of Fab management was relatively low.

The founder's personality and style of management have led to a change in the company's personnel, with more than 50 layoffs in New York after senior executives left. And in the second half of 2013, Fab transformation did not achieve the expected success, September site traffic compared to 2012 down 75%. The volume of fab web and mobile apps peaked in November 2012, just before the announcement of Fab abandoning the flash business.

In May of this year, there were rumours that Fab would be laid off again, a sign that FAB would start shutting down the site-and that the rest of the people would be fired slowly and left in January 2015 at the latest. A FAB spokeswoman denied the date, but said employees had "at least a job security".

Repeat?

"I have made all the mistakes mentioned in the textbook. I learned from it that I knew how to start a company with 48 million dollars. 」

However, some people say that they have been shopping in Fab two times, both are unpleasant experience: good looking sunglasses, not durable pillow. Critics have also said that the two founder's Instagram account is Fab's death diary, which costs 9 million dollars a month, including some of its founders ' private helicopters, yachts and drugs.

After seeing these rumours, founder Goldberg, June 5, said on Twitter, "We have enough money to run for years and a complete development plan, just for a certain amount of time." 」

This is reminiscent of Goldberg's last entrepreneurial experience, the 2004 Goldberg founder of the staff recommendation website Jobster, then it laid off 41%, was bought by other companies at the price of cabbage, Jobster also experienced a business transformation-it after several acquisitions, respectively, transformed into search engines and social networking sites. "Whatever the latest fashion trend in the tech industry, he always jumps from one hotspot to the next." While this can be exciting for the media and investors, it is meaningless for companies. 」

Jobster has completed four rounds of financing within a short period of time, and has shown deep pockets in the acquisition of rivals, and Goldberg is very confident about the company's development in public. "He's very charismatic. He is good at selling his ideas. This talent has made him recruit a lot of talent and attract a lot of money, but his disadvantage is that no matter how well things go, he always wants to be bigger, better and stronger. 」

By the end of 2006, the News of Jobster layoffs, Goldberg came to the rumor. "The same as its recent stance on Fab, he has said he wants to save costs." And the two companies ' layoffs are surprisingly consistent, two years after the company was created. 」

In the media's view, the biggest difference in treating jobster and Fab is that FAB supporters and funds are much larger than they were, and Fab is not as profitable as jobster, just burning money faster-a lesson from Jobster's failure, perhaps, is that "the more financing, the higher the fault-tolerance rate." 」

Context?

After half a year before the media reported that Fab executives were leaving, perhaps at any time, Fab had responded to the media in a few days, suggesting that the reports were biased and did not mention Goldberg's successful experience with Jobster and Fab, nor did it mention that Fab The implementation of the development strategy adjustment was carried out with the support of investors.

Objectively speaking, Fab currently has 120 million dollars in cash at the bank, much more than many emerging technology companies. Fab already has a lot of channels to get through the sales business, and has been able to operate and operate normally. In addition, Fab has a 30 million-dollar loan mechanism and has developed business plans for the company in recent years.

Fab is working to build a long-term sustainable business. We are rapidly increasing the size of our investments and adjusting them in a timely manner based on the facts. Now we carefully consider and focus on implementing our solid strategic plan related to the 120 million dollar cash and 30 million dollar loan mechanism.

About 3.28% of all users who visit the Fab Web site shop through the Fab website, but the actual currency conversion rate is much more than 10% (nearly 15% a day ago).

25% of users who shop on the Fab site this year are at least three times more than the Fab site.

Fab is expanding the scale of assets (cash, branding, skills, consumers) to boost the company's success over the next few years.

Over the past one months, Goldberg has talked about what Fab has been doing in the last half-year: redesigning the couch. The sofa is called Flip, but this video does not mention its competitiveness.

A FAB spokesman confirmed yesterday that the company is planning to buy a Finnish furniture design and online sales company, which is not disclosed. That is to say, Fab may have to transform, perhaps not affect the original business, began to dabble in online furniture sales, but regardless of which case, all with its high-quality boutique design site does not match the original intention, are reminiscent of Jobster.

Executives have been left out for half a year, followed by a similar history: sudden layoffs, rumours of a founder on Twitter, and big acquisitions. Who do you want to believe this time?

Source: Creative Net