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"Fab, a two-year-old online store for design goods, is laying the groundwork for further global expansion. The startup announced Tuesday that it has raised $150 million in a partial series D round from investors including Tencent, Atomico, Andreessen Horowitz, Itochu, Menlo Ventures, RTP Capital, Pinnacle Ventures, Lars Hinrichs and Docomo Capital.\nThe e-tailer, which is headquartered in the U.S., has already made significant headway into Europe. The region now accounts for approximately 40% of sales, founder and CEO Jason Goldberg told Mashable in a phone interview Tuesday. With the help of new investors Tencent, which operates some of the largest web portals and online messaging systems in China, and Itochu, one of Japan's largest holding companies, Fab has set the stage for its move into East Asia and India.\nGoldberg says that China's online buying population aligns well with Fab's typical buying demographic. According to his figures, 60% of online buyers in China are between the ages of 25 and 35, and are predominantly female. While he acknowledges that western brands have had better success selling luxury goods in China, he believes Fab can draw middle-class buyers through products they can't buy anywhere else.\nGoldberg's vision for his two-year-old company grows larger and larger. Fab no longer wants to simply become the world's largest design store, but rather the \"worldwide leader in 'emotional commerce,'\" Goldberg says. Instead of pursuing a \"commodity commerce\" strategy \u00E0 la Amazon, Goldberg hopes to carve a space by \"helping people discover and buy the meaningful stuff in their lives.\" Such a strategy, he believes, will enable Fab to become the fifth largest online retailer with a value of more than $10 billion, following Amazon, Alibaba, eBay and Rakuten. \nOf course, it still has a long way to go: Fab only clocks in around 14 million registered users, who have altogether purchased 6 million products. The company is not yet profitable in the U.S. nor in Europe, although Goldberg says collective sales grew by more than 500% in 2012 and will grow another 100% this year, and that gross margins have grown from 29% in 2011 to 43% today. Fab's U.S. and European businesses are on track to be profitable by early 2015, he adds; what's more, the U.S. business could be almost immediately profitable if it simply cut down its marketing spending.\nAbout half of Fab's sales are of home products, 20% are of apparel items and accessories and 10% are of art and jewelry goods, respectively. Impressively, Fab claims that more than a third of its sales take place on tablet and smartphone devices.\nBeyond geographic expansion, Fab is looking to improve its mobile apps, as well as warehousing and logistics. The company is also hoping to expand its private-label business. For some time, Fab has been working with designers whose goods have already sold well on the site, licensing their designs and manufacturing the goods themselves \u2014 a process that leads to significantly larger margins for Fab, Goldberg says. The company currently has no plans to expand its brick-and-mortar locations beyond its initial store in Hamburg, Germany, which opened in April.\nFab has raised more than $310 million in funding to date, and isn't done filling its series D round. Goldberg says the company is \"probably\" looking to raise another $100 million or so.\nImage courtesy of Fab"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/06/19/fab-raises-150-million-series-d-tencent/>