The big defeat: Flash-shopping star Fab's Song of Ice and Fire

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Two years, from the market capitalisation of 1 billion U.S. dollars to 1-1.500 million U.S. dollars packaged for sale, the vagaries and blindness of the product strategy makes Fab become a victim of capital games.

In the run-up to August, the Fab founder and chief executive, Jason Goldberg, confirmed a startling news that a report to Forbes magazine formally confirmed that Fab was about to be packaged for sale. Despite the company's continuing negative news from the start of the year-massive layoffs, high-level departures and a broken capital chain-the outside world has raised questions about its frequent transformation and the tough style of its CEO. Even the US tech blog Valleywag announced in April that Fab was about to close the site in 2015. Finally, all the dust settled.

What happened to Fab?

It used to be the hottest star in capital markets. In the 2013 C round of financing, Fab was 150 million dollars, Tencent was also involved in April 2013, Fab acquired the headquarters in Hamburg, Germany, a custom home company Massivkonzept, to try to carry out offline sales, to June 2013 Fab valuation has reached 1 billion The dollar, became the representative of the new power of the Internet.

And it is also the representative of the frequent transformation of the Internet company, founded so far has been transformed three times: from the gay social networking site, to the Flash purchase site, and then to give up the flash purchase to do the full price of electricity, and then the life of creative designers, personalized recommendation platform. Frankly, the logic behind Fab's frequent transformation is simply to look for a repeatable business model to rapidly expand into a giant company. Seemingly forward-looking transformation, but did not achieve the expected success, now unrecognizable Fab may wish to look back at their original appearance. Perhaps this kind of look back to the other facing the transformation of the start-up companies a little revelation.

"Nirvana of gay dating Sites"

Let the user's daily life and the work of a good designer on earth link.

Fab, formerly known as Fabulis, is a gay social networking site that sets Yelp reviews, Foursquare sign-in and Groupon deals in June 2011 and transformed it into a Fab for flash-purchase sites.

Most of the comments think it's "Nirvana of a gay dating site," In fact this time the transformation logic is very fluent, even can say, is because Fab very good inherits the Fabulis gene only then has promoted its future blockbuster, for instance social network's operation Way, the small crowd and the original taste. The initial Fab core competitiveness is the taste and screening capabilities, it works closely with different types of designers, including independent craftsmen or a certain well-known designers. The user experience is very good, loyalty is very high.

When the founder talked about closing Fabulis's decision to start Fab, he said, "We're doing this out of a whole lot of love ⋯ of course we need to make a profit, but all of our thoughts come from sharing better design products, which is beyond doubt." "We can think of this as the original purpose of Fab, so that users ' daily lives are linked to the work of a good designer on earth," he said.

"The great thing about this site is that we want to present something new every day," said founder Goldberg, "a platform that provides us with more opportunities than ever before to do something that traditional physical stores have never tried." For example, a 4000-dollar bookcase and a 2-dollar toothbrush were placed together, which was never possible before. But in the online world of inclusiveness, it can be combined naturally. 」

Thus, the famous pioneer artist Frank Kozik designed the Orange Banana toy, the British artist David Trubridge launched the environmental-friendly chandeliers ... these unique artistic temperament and design works, through the fab.com, into the public view. Really do for the user constantly create a sense of surprise, and very timely fill the U.S. electricity market blank. (Although the U.S. electric business has been quite developed, but has been a lack of high texture design sites.) The originator of the Woot has already been bought by the Amazon, Etsy is too petty too good silk, and Fab on the sale of things compared to less texture and cool. )

With Fab quality design, social networking operations, and sophisticated user needs, it continues to deliver a stunning transcript.

"Give up the rush after the flash purchase."

The widespread belief that the vagaries and blindness of the product strategy has made Fab a victim of the capital game.

Just as everyone is admiring the glamour of the flash-shopping star, the plot suddenly shifted in the second half of the 2013. Fab first made a major revision in May, making the original flash-purchase site more like an integrated E-commerce site. In addition to the Fab product page, which can be accessed by color, design, and so on, in July, Fab also abandoned its successful signature selling method: Flash mail.

Fab is being emailed every day at the beginning of development, offering a wide range of products, from basic kitchen utensils and jewellery to a rather unorthodox but irresistible cool product, such as a variety of human-made floor lamps designed by artists. Instead of a more personalized approach to--follow, users can focus more on the categories of products they are interested in.

Fab change is intended to create a more personalized fab shopping experience by Follow users to their preferred product categories. Follow allows users to narrow their range and receive only the information they are interested in, compared with the information they receive from FAB or special offers each day.

After a change in the business model, followed by a series of layoffs and personnel changes, after senior executives left, Berlin headquarters and Fab in New York have been drastically downsized, and founder Goldberg announced that he will not be paid in 2014. He explained that all this was the need for Fab's long-term development, that reliance on flash business models was too easy to imitate and lacked sustainable development, and the company's business would be transformed into an inventory based model. There is speculation that this is the transition to another version of the Amazon rhythm.

The seemingly forward-looking transformation did not achieve the expected success, with September 2013 site traffic falling by 75% compared with 2012, while fab sites and mobile applications reached their peak in November 2012, just before the announcement of Fab's rejection of the flash-shopping business.

Many foreign technology media in the discussion of fab, it is widely believed that the vagaries and blindness of the product strategy makes Fab become a victim of capital games.

"Just one thing."

Startups should only do one thing and do it to the extreme.

By April this year, there were rumours that Fab would be again on a massive layoff, and that was the beginning of a bold speculation in the American tech blog Valleywag.

But at the time, founder Goldberg reacted quickly, dismissing the rumor in ane-mail that Valleywag was a boring gossip site and stressed that the money in the bank account was sufficient for several years. Fab spokesman Amy Juaristi also told the media that the company has long-term operations planning, investors are also confident that there will still be a lot of work to be done head-on ahead.

Facts have proved that in the face of the general decline of the outside world, Fab has not given up the efforts of Vista, in addition to the fab.com on the land continued to launch its own brand; Fab is more focused on the sales momentum of the online furniture, after the acquisition of German custom furniture company Massivkonzept, has been rumored to create a new shopping site on this basis, specializing in furniture design, manufacturing and online sales. Now this rumor has also been confirmed, after the sale of Fab, the future of the company's business will focus on the new online retail brand--hem. Hem is a user can customize the furniture electricity website, will be on line in two months, hope to become high-quality, low price has the design sense of the online version Ikea.

The disorderly flower gradually wants the attractive eye, abandons the flash buys after the Fab in a year time to make the painful struggle, a moment to go left, want to be another Amazon, for a moment to turn to the right, desire to build another online Ikea; however, it is, after all, from the Fab we met at first, bringing us an endless sense of surprise and anticipation. Fab is a far cry.

It is worth pondering that Goldberg, who is keen on sharing entrepreneurial experience on personal blogs, has recently written such a phrase, "startups should actually do one thing and do it to the extreme." "He, who has always been an ambitious and assertive person, is not sure whether he is looking back on the original intention of creating Fab," he said. And now, Jason Goldberg is finally ready to start again.

Beginner is a wonderful thing, it is the source of creativity, and sometimes the soul of the product. To the Flash-buy star Fab.