Over three million users strong, design-focused flash sales platform Fab is expanding to a new vertical on Monday, with the launch of a beauty-focused pop-up shop in collaboration with Conde Nast glossy Glamour Magazine. As we wrote earlier this year, the fast growing site expanded their product offerings through the launch of the new Fab Shops, which incorporated verticals of Kids, Pets, Food, Fashion and Vintage.
Fab co-founder, design guru and chief curator Bradford Shellhammer explains to us that Fab’s mantra is that design lives anywhere in the world at all price points, in all categories. While one wouldn’t necessarily associate beauty products with design, Shellhammer explains that when it comes to packaging and brands, design is a key component to the allure of certain beauty products.
The new pop-up shop, which has been curated by Glamour and Fab editors, launches on Monday morning with high-quality make-up, luxurious skincare products, conditioning lip care, aromatic candles and more. Brands featured include Nest Fragrances, Philip B. Botanical Products, Oscar Blandi, Pangea, Demeter, josie maran, and malin + goetz.
Fab is pretty stoked that an established media company like Conde Nast is willing to partner with the new guard for e-commerce and curation. Glamour Fashion Development Director Susan Cernek says of the new partnership, “The bulk of our 25,000 comments each month take place within our beauty vertical, so there’s a strong community there. Partnering with Fab.com—a site that has an equally robust and engaged community—on a pop-up beauty shop is a natural fit.”
Shellhammer adds that beauty will become a more permanent vertical for the site and will be featuring more products soon. Clearly expanding to new verticals are only going to help Fab hit that $100 million in 2012 revenue. As Shellhammer says “there are only so many sofas you want to buy,” and beauty happens to be a vertical that has higher margins.
Fab was also featured yesterday in Facebook’s developer spotlight, revealing growth trends for the e-commerce site from Facebook’s social functionality. Fab says it has seen a 100% increase in the referral traffic from Facebook since launching its timeline app. And membership has grown from 1.8 million to more than 3.2 million users. While these stats are impressive, it’s important to note that referral traffic could also have been increasing pre-timeline because Fab has been exploding in growth over the past six months.
