Fab Visits November
Over the past few weeks we’ve seen a dramatic shift in how people get to Fab.
Just 2 months ago — as recent as November 2011 — nearly 50% of Fab’s traffic came via our daily emails to our members.
Fab Visits November
In January 2012 we saw direct visits overtake email-driven visits for the first time.
We believe that the rise in direct traffic is because of 3 reasons:
Also notable is the rise of Pinterest as a traffic source for Fab. While still relatively small and accounting for .68% of all visits, Pinterest doubled as a percentage of visits in January and remarkably overtook Twitter links to claim the #7 spot.
@devfab, always rmbr 7am 2-2-12, locked out office, uploading Fab iPhone 2.0 to itunes from my laptop in hallway - ur 1st Fab ship it!
Back in December when Fab was nominated for a Crunchie in the Best Shopping App category, I said to Bradford:
“Wow, that’s cool. But we’re not going to win. We’re not really part of that whole Silicon Valley tech scene.”
Bradford retorted:
“Of course we’re going to win. We’ll win because we really did deliver the best, freshest, most exciting, and most innovative shopping experience in 2011. We’ll win because people know it. They’ve experienced it. It’s real.”
Duh. As usual, Bradford was right.
Congrats team Fab and thanks to all 2 million of Fab’s members. Last night Fab took home the Best Shopping App 2011 at the Crunchies, the premier annual tech awards.
We won by focusing on customers, delivering fun, and making people smile.
Hard to believe we’ve only just finished our 7 month of existence.
As we say at Fab, it’s just the beginning. We’re going to keep keeping it real and delivering value to users every day. And, as we do, expect a rapid pace of new features, benefits, products, and innovations from Fab over the next weeks and months.
Smile, you’re designed to.
Fab.com — the world’s leading design website — is actively recruiting for Chief Merchandising Officer for Fab Europe for our upcoming European launch.
Based in Berlin, the Chief Merchandising Officer for Fab Europe will be responsible for setting the design aesthetic and direction for Fab Europe. He/she will work closely with Fab’s Worldwide Chief Creative Officer to cultivate and develop relationships with design partners throughout Europe and around the globe to bring an exciting mix of design products to Fab’s members in Europe.
Get ready to hit the ground running. Fab launches in Europe real soon and we’re going to be running hard. You must be driven, ambitious, eager, and ready to lead.
Most of all, you need to have a point of view that is similar to that of Fab. We’re fun. We’re colorful. You be too.
“The world is serious enough. Why does e-commerce have to be so serious? Fab is rambunctious, provocative, and we’re gonna keep pushing and making e-commerce more colorful and fun.” — Bradford
@shervin just raised the bar on VC term sheets - shaved @fab and other investments on his head.
Bloomberg Video: Fab Reaching 2 Million Members
Inc Magazine Video From fabulis to Fab
“The more successful Fab gets, the more humbling it gets. This company and this journey really is just about doing what we love and trying to make people smile. It’s a thrill. We’re just lucky to be able to do it.” — betashop
Any day now Fab will surpass 2 million members. We’ve added more than 400,000 new members in the past 30 days and doubled our membership since November.
We’re so excited about it that we’ve decided to celebrate today with a series of new features and announcements designed to make great design discoverable and attainable by even more people.
1. Introducing Fab Shops.
One of the most interesting user experience challenges of running a flash sales website is layering on more products and sales without diminishing the browsing experience. We have ambitions to grow from 3500 products live on Fab at a time to tens of thousands, but without losing the excitement and discovery that Fab has become known for.
Today we are launching Fab Shops, a unique new browsing innovation that enables Fab members to visually browse Fab products by “shops” organized around product categories.
At the top of the Fab main sales page users will now find a new section, Featured Shops. Here, users can visually browse all of the products currently live on Fab by shop categories. The items in the shops change daily as new sales go live or expire.
We’re launching today with more than 20 shops:
In addition, users can now browse all the products on Fab by shop, color, and price.
And then, also sort within a shop by price, best selling, and most faved.
This is just the start. We’ll be expanding to 10,000+ SKU’s on Fab immediately and introducing even more innovative ways to browse and discover them. iPhone, iPad, and Android version of Fab Shops will launch in the next few days as well.
2. As of today, Fab.com is now open for anyone to join. No more waiting list. No more invitation only. Come one, come all. We believe that design should be approachable and affordable for everyone.
3. International Design Lovers, Here We Come!
One of the loudest requests we’ve heard from our users is for Fab to start selling and delivering our design inspirations outside the U.S.
-We’ll be launching in Canada in days, not weeks.
-We’ll be in Europe very soon. Bradford and I were in Berlin, Brussels, and Paris last week laying the plans and putting the teams together. Expect more news on this very soon.
Smile, you’re designed to.
Here at Fab.com we’re all about good design.
Authenticity is part of our soul.
We guarantee that every product we sell is authentic and that we are authorized to sell it.
We offer our own unique graphic designs on website.
Everything is home grown and original.
That’s what good design is all about.
Being true to designers, creators, and customers.
That’s why I take it as a personal offense when I see would-be competitors just blatantly and openly rip us off.
In the last month we’ve seen no less than 7 Fab copycats.
3 of them have gone as far as to copy almost exactly key elements of our website design.
We’ve come across screenshots from these copycats that include our own design elements and even our own Fab employees.
The worst offender is a new company, bamarang, operating out of the UK and Germany from the infamous Rocket Internet - Samwer brothers. Their site is not just a copycat, it’s frankly just stealing our unique Fab design elements.
Fab Design
bamarang rip-off
Fab Design
bamarang rip-off
Let me put bamarang and the other copycats on notice. Ripping someone off is not going to work in this space. Knock-offs are just bad design. Users will see right through it. Such tactics may work in some industries, but not in design.
In design, customers are smart and customers value real authenticity.
Do something original or don’t do anything at all.
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With 1.8 million members (more than doubling in the last 3 months), Fab is rapidly emerging as the world’s #1 website for design.
Fab.com is also the leading innovator in converging social and commerce.
Today we are upping the ante with our latest innovation: Social Shopping.
Fab’s new Social Shopping features enable Fab members to more easily share the products they are buying with their friends on their Facebook Timeline and with other Fab members on the Fab.com Live Feed.
Here’s how it works.
First, it’s entirely opt-in. Fab Members can decide for themselves if they want to participate in Social Shopping. If they do, we’ve got a little reward for them as they can earn $10/month in Free Credits just for enabling Social Shopping. That’s our little way of saying thanks for sharing!
Social Shopping can be activated from the Fab Live Feed. There, at the top of the page, members will see the Activate Social Shopping button.
Clicking the Activate Social Shopping button opens a fly-down window that explains the Social Shopping Options: 
There are currently two Social Shopping Options on Fab.com:
1. Add your Fab purchases to your Facebook Timeline. Fab is thrilled to be among the first to launch a timeline app. To get started you can opt-in on Fab to add the app to Facebook Timeline, and your future purchases will be shared on your Timeline, and you’ll be able to discover the items most popular among your friends through the Facebook News Feed and ticker.
Now, we know that Fab members may not want to share every purchase on their Timeline. To start we have created a few simple preferences: Fab members can choose to opt-in to share “adult” product purchases and gifts for other people. By default both of these options are off.
You can also always edit your settings from your Application Settings Page on Facebook, or can remove specific activity directly from Timeline or from your personal Activity Log on Facebook.
Once the user adds the app to Timeline, their Fab purchases will then appear as activity happens, as shown here. 
2. The second Social Shopping option is to enable other Fab members to see your username when you buy something on Fab.
When a user does not have this feature enabled, their purchases appear anonymously to other Fab users, like this: 
Once social shopping is enabled, the user’s name is shared with others, and it looks like this: 
Clicking through on the Fab Member’s username then shows that user’s Fab Profile which displays all of the items the member has purchased, faved, or added to the Fab Inspiration Wall.
Today’s Social Shopping launch is just the start. We’ll be continuing to forge ahead and innovating at the intersection of social and commerce. Expect more and easier ways to share and discover great design products with your friends and the Fab community.
Get Social Shopping on Fab now!
Smile, you’re designed to.
Bradford and I at work. Photo Credit: Courtesy of the NY Times.
Greetings from Berlin, where there are no fewer than 5 companies working on Fab-like companies.
