Fab.com debuted a new partner Monday morning -- Madonna's new album MDNA. The fashion and design focused flash sales site is started the week off with a sale of the Queen of Pop's newest album on the official day of release, offering U.S. members MDNA for $7.99 (a substantial savings from the $14.99 retail price).
Musicians have been taking to tech companies by selling new albums, songs and even concert tickets with popular sites around the Web. Just after SXSW, Norah Jones just debuted a song off of her latest album on travel site Jetsetter and Lady Gaga partnered with Gilt to sell special concert access experiences for several of her little monsters and worked with Zynga to create GagaVille. And now Madonna is testing the power of Fab.com's divalicious membership base to get more buzz about her new album.
This partnership also acts as a celebrity endorsement of sorts for Madonna and most online businesses do love to tout the clout they have with the Hollywood types. In fact, Mint.com has created a whole business around celebrity experiences and curation for its fashion-focused features.
Madonna also took to Facebook over the weekend giving one in-person interview to comedian and late-night talk-show host Jimmy Fallon for broadcast on her Facebook page. She is following this up the Facebook interview with her first ever live Twitter chat at 10pm EST.
So it looks like the stranger to tech, Madonna, is trying to see if she can raise Gaga-level buzz on the Internet with her latest album action.
The MDNA sale comes to Fab just days after the site announced that it hit 3 million members and is projecting $100 million in revenue in 2012.
This new expectation and membership growth is a great feather in the company's cap, especially since the company pivoted a year ago to have a design and fashion focus rather than trying to do a little bit of everything.
At the start of the year, the high-design focused daily-deal site announced that it acquired the community-selected marketplace of designers: FashionStake. Details of the deal were not disclosed. And Fab has continued to eye more Internet design groups that could help grow the company.
In the past two years, Fab.com has done a lot of innovating and pivoting to find its niche and was handsomely rewarded with more than $50 million of funding from venture big boys such as Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures and First Round Capital.
Fab.com originally started its company as "Yelp for Gays" but that was not taking off as fast as they were hoping. Then they quickly adjusted to become "Groupon for Gays." But that also didn't get the desired traction. So the founder and CEO Jason Goldberg had to do some soul-searching and stop being the 'blank for gays' and start looking for something they could stand apart as -- that was finding unique design-centric items for those that love quirky and well-designed items.
The Fab.com that currently exists, didn't come to be until June 2011. Within seven months, the company accumulated more than 1.6 million members for the daily email and they had sold 750,000 products.
The biggest round of funding for the company came in December -- a $40 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Now that the company has the capital to start acquiring other design and daily deal sites, we could see Fab.com close in on one of the biggest names in daily and flash sale companies -- One Kings Lane.
One Kings Lane has seen tremendous growth and has collected more than $63 million in funding over the last year. The company is now exceeding $100 million in yearly revenues after experiencing an “explosive 2010” in which annual sales jumped more than 500%, with 75% of those sales coming from repeat customers.
Fab.com has a great chance of making the expansion to fashion deals from design deals but it will have to show that it still has its own perspective and personality in order to not get lumped in with the masses -- and having a Madonna stamp couldn't hurt a company based on fashion and design.
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One Kings Lane is the only private online sales site solely dedicated to designer home décor. Each day (Monday – Friday) there are 3-5 sales that are brand specific and last 72 hours. Events begin at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST. For the first time ever, consumers have access to the personal inventory of high profile interior designers thanks to the Tastemaker Tag Sales. The sales will include an exciting, eclectic mix of vintage finds, one-off samples, décor and furniture from a designer’s branded line. The first TTS will launch on April 10th. Every Saturday, for three days, an interior designer will offer a signature assortment of hand-picked selections, which will be offered to One Kings Lane members at 50 percent or more below retail value. One Kings Lane was founded by Susan Feldman, a former fashion executive who has worked with such companies as Warnaco/Ralph Lauren Swimwear, Polo Jeans, and C&C California, and Alison Pincus, a digital media expert who spent time at ELLE Décor, Home, and Metropolitan Home. When Susan moved back to Los Angeles from New York a few years ago, and into her first house as an adult, she was house proud, but noted the frugal climate. She saw an opportunity to create a new way to make beautiful home furnishings available affordably, a sort of online sample sale. She and Ali were introduced and Susan’s background in retail, combined with Ali’s background in digital media created the perfect combination to create One Kings Lane.
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Fab is on a mission to help people better their lives with design.
Fab was founded by serial entrepreneur Jason Goldberg in February 2011 and launched on June 9, 2011. Fab’s founders are Bradford Shellhammer, Nishith Shah and Deepa Shah. Fab’s headquarters are in New York. The company also has offices in Berlin, London and Pune.
Over 6 million people around the world use Fab todiscover everyday design products at great prices, to connect with the world’s most exciting designers, and toshare their favorite design inspirations.
