This article was taken from the October 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Social-ecommerce site Fab is on a mission: to change the public's perception of design as elitist or expensive. "There's great design for all prices and in everything, be it a pen, a notepad or a lamp," says cofounder and CCO Bradford Shellhammer. "We want to show design that makes people smile."
Since it evolved from their previous business, Fabulis, a New York-based social network for gay men created by Shellhammer and CEO Jason Goldberg in 2010, Fab has attracted five million members -- and logs a transaction every 20 seconds. "Before relaunching, we wrote three things on a napkin: what are we passionate about? What is a big untapped market? Can we be the best at it? The intersection of these three things was what we would do next," says Goldberg. "It took us a second to work out it was design."
On Fab's first day of trading in June 2011, it sold $65,000 (£42,000) worth of products. "We thought we could make $150 million in sales in the first three years. We did that in the first." They launched in Britain in June; in July, they raised $105 million in a round of financing led by Niklas Zennstrom's Atomico and including Andreessen Horowitz and Troy Carter. "When we launched there were lots of stories about companies trying this new model and losing," says Shellhammer. "But our promise to designers who work with us is that we all work together."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
