Fab.com, the e-commerce company with a focus on modern design for daily flash sales, is celebrating their anniversary with an acquisition.  The acquisition speaks to the company’s goals for global growth as it reaches out to new markets.

Fab acquires Llustre

To expand their reach, Fab acquired Casacanda in Germany to jumpstart their Continental European operations, and Fashionstake in the U.S. to launch their independent fashion vertical.  So to further their global efforts, they’ve acquired Llustre to formally launch and open their offices in the UK.  Not only that, they’re relaunching their Fab UK site to better facilitate and handle their consumer base in that region.  So Fab patrons from the UK, when visiting Fab.com, will be rerouted to their UK site.

Llustre is a newly launched site but it has proven that it’s got what it takes to be the UK leader in online design sales and inspiration.

“Llustre’s founders Tracy Doree and Vivienne Bearman have assembled a team of 25 of the most design-passionate individuals we’ve come across anywhere in the world,” the Fab Team said in a statement.

“More than 500 leading design partners are already working with Llustre and their website is nothing short of brilliant. And, the results speak for themselves. Membership and orders have tripled in the past 5 weeks as the word has spread about Llustre’s sales with the likes of Plumen, Normann Copenhagen, Anglepoise, Texidors, Stelton, La Lampe Gras, Falcon Enamelware, CIA, The Future Mapping Company, Naomi Paul, Black+Blum, Hoganas, and Iittala — most of whom have also been on Fab.”

Some fab people are on board

Fab is taking this opportunity to truly set up shop in Europe.  Maria Molland, who previously ran global businesses and new ventures for Thomson Reuters, will take on the expanded role of Chief European Officer for Fab.  Molland joined Fab earlier this year and has been responsible for their international growth.   And with Llustre’s acquisition, Doree will work with Molland as Managing Director of Fab UK and head of UK Merchandising, while Bearman will head Fab’s UK Product & Operations teams.

Roman Kirsch, founder and CEO of Casacanda, will continue serving as Managing Director of Fab in Continental Europe. Under his leadership, Fab’s Continental Europe team grew from 30 to 85 people in the past four months, while Fab’s membership in Europe grew to more than 1 million members from 0 at the beginning of the year.

“As we’ve said many times, we believe that everyone everywhere benefits from great design. We have a big big vision to bring Fab to every part of the world. Today we are selling in 20 countries and Fab now has nearly 400 team members worldwide, with offices in New York, Berlin, London, Pune, and Deinze. We plan to bring Fab to many more countries in the future,” said Fab.

Fab’s done everything right to fuel its growth since taking on the flash sale model about a year ago.  One of its most successful strategies was the social network integration, helping the site to better market its sales and learn a bit more about its users all the while.  Fab’s cross-platform mobile approach has been helpful as well, taking advantage of a growing trend around mobile retail.  The well-executed strategies are in large part thanks to the latest round of funding, bringing another $40 million of capital to Fab’s  budget.  As the site continues to rival the likes of Gilt and Etsy, the rapid global expansion will only solidify Fab’s substantial market position as the future of e-commerce.