Trouble at The Iconic, Square enters the marketplace space, Amazon wants be a digital art dealer and Fab raising money
Fab.com has been in my thoughts the last 2 weeks. Are they growing too fast? Do they play the PR game and what is their future? Those 3 questions have been circling in my thoughts and in all honesty I am more unsure about this business than before they raised the money.
14 million users, $310 million raised and many acquisitions. Those 3 things together does not make any investor jump for their checque books, in all honesty it raises question. I am a Jason Goldberg fan ( I read his blog and I get the daily fab emails) but I think we need to look at a few things in context.
One – they consistently mention becoming an Amazon of design. Amazon is business that is non repeatable and it is a behemoth. eCommerce is a margins game and fab with respect is going to battle becoming a $1 billion dollar business. Why? I don’t they can scale the business to make that kind of revenue globally. What makes Amazon scary is that it has a variety of methods to make revenue (AWS, Prime, Marketplace, Fulfillment by Amazon etc) what does Fab have that can be seen in a similar manner? At the moment nothing. Secondly, this created version of ecommerce – emotional ecommerce is really a Goldberg creation. No other industry analyst, CEO, VP has made mention of that. I get that they need to create themselves a niche but I think fab needs to take a few lessons from Amazon. Be transparent but really try to tone down the rhetoric and focus on achieving customer happiness and make a lot of revenue before telling everyone about it.