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Micro tl;dr: Build a company with a successful business model, and then pivot away from it, plus get concerned about someone trying to replicate your success in
by hga 12y ago
Micro tl;dr: Build a company with a successful business model, and then pivot away from it, plus get concerned about someone trying to replicate your success in Europe and prematurely enter that market.
- zyang 12y agoI scanned the article and couldn't find the reason they pivoted away from flash sales model.
- michaelbuckbee 12y agoDoing flash sales is good for profit (low inventory, good for sales b/c it's going away etc.) - but limited their overall topline revenue.
- swang 12y agoBecause they felt their third-party sellers were too slow.
- noodle 12y agoThe article implies it was because of delivery time. My marginally informed $0.02: They wanted to become an ecomm giant. But every sale they ran originally was fairly small-batch. One step up from an etsy store. You can't really scale that up. They decided they wanted to go big, and to do so meant holding inventory and selling more mass-produced things.
- redindian75 12y agocoz it took average of 16 days for customers to get the item from 3rd party designers, so they figured if they held the inventory themselves they could cut that down. They did, but in that process lost the originality of the small boutique items, and became a commodity shop.
- dreamweapon 12y agoThe erratic (and at times outright maniacal) behavior of their CEO had something to do with their downfall also, from what I've read.
- abraham_s 12y agoMaybe the "Ronco principle" has some truth to it. The two things I remember about the CEO is 1) Getting mad at someone who wont switch seats in a plane 2) Not allow employees to hang their jackets on their seats and joking about firing people
- GBond 12y agoThis was their second pivot. Fab was originally a gay social network. In fact, there is a connection to HN. I recall it was on HN that the founder was commenting on a story on undergoing major pivot and securing funding.