Fab.com’s Not So Fabulous Fire Sale Looms

Will Fab.com be sold this month? Sources indicate so.

Home design e-tailer Fab.com is expected to sell at the end of February, according to a source close to the matter, Re/code.net reported. Fab.com announced it had interest in selling the brand last fall, but did not discuss the terms.

When Fab.com joined the startup scene in 2011 as a flash-sale site, analysts anticipated large growth for the e-commerce company after it raised $150 million in a Series D round led by Andreessen Horowitz and China Internet giant Tencent in the years following and got more than $300 in funding. But Fab.com has had struggles since switching strategies. For a once venture-backed company, Fab.com’s story has been a puzzling one in recent years as it slowly lost steam and didn’t amount to its anticipated potential.

“Since joining the $1 billion club, Fab.com has faced serious setbacks as it switched its strategy from flash sales to traditional e-commerce: the resignation of co-founder Bradford Shellhammer, the firing of COO Beth Ferreira, and a series of deep layoffs that has cut the company’s roster in half,” Forbes reported in August. Fab.com was once given a $1 billion valuation, but after some spending flubs, design alteration, and directional change, the original concept that attracted consumers was lost. That began its downward spiral, which led to an 80 percent layoff of the company between mid-2013 and early 2014.

While details of the full deal surface, here’s what Fab CEO Jason Goldberg said in August about the potential sale: “We have had a lot of inbound interest in the valuable Fab brand and assets. We are currently evaluating such inquiries. As point of fact, we are not shopping Fab around and we have not hired any bankers or agents.”