Fancy Follows Fab’s Lead, Attracts More Celeb Support for New Age Retail
The Fancy, a New York-based social commerce startup that pegs itself as “part store, blog, magazine and wish list,” nabbed $27 million in funding from American Express, billionaire Len Blavatnik and the one and only Will Smith. The round brings the firm’s total funding to $53 million.
American Express president Edward Gilligan is joining The Fancy’s board, alongside Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Kering chairman Francois-Henri Pinault.
According to an anonymous tipster cited by Bloomberg, the financing pushes the company’s valuation past the $600 million mark. The same source revealed that The Fancy generates about $3 million in revenue per month.
The secret behind The Fancy’s success is its strong emphasis on user experience. In an exclusive interview, founder and CEO Joe Einhorn told SiliconAngle Senior Managing Editor Kristen Nicole that the service combines the best features of Pinterest with the traditional Amazon experience to deliver “great online shopping.” He explained that major retailers offer consumers a meaningful shopping experience in real life, but fail to replicate it on their websites.
“People use our mobile apps to buy the coolest things in the world directly from inside our app. On other services you are clicking out of their app, to dead ends or to external sites that aren’t mobile-friendly that break the experience. Think of our app like Amazon: you see something, you buy it. One click. But instead of finding items via keyword you find them in the stream.”
Online shopping is gaining a lot of traction, and The Fancy is not the only startup that’s benefiting from this trend. In June, design shopping site Fab.com raised $150 million in funding from Chinese interest giant Tencent, Andreessen Horowitz and Atomico to accelerate its expansion into Asia.
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