Social Ecommerce platform Fab to layoff a third of its employees

Social Ecommerce platform Fab is laying-off a third of employees leaving the future of the company up for question.

According to an exclusive report on BuzzFeed, Fab employees were asked yesterday, Wednesday May 21^st to not come into work. A later announcement made by Fab confirmed speculations stating an estimated 80-90 employees will be let go. This marks the third time Fab will be terminating a considerable amount of its work force this past year.

The current staff will now consist of about 200 employees, a far cry from the once 700 people employed by Fab at its peak.

“We have parted ways with incredibly talented individuals for whom we have only great respect and appreciation. Realigning our team is part of a broader business plan, which we began implementing last fall and which will continue to unfold in weeks ahead. We are seeing great success in our recent private label initiatives and customized furniture launches — and we are aligning our global team to support that direction. We have every confidence in our path ahead,” the company said in a statement via spokeswoman Amy Juaristi.

Fab was founded in 2010 and was a pioneer in bringing flash sales to the US. Since then the company has raised more than $300 million in venture capital, and was considered one of the fastest growing and innovative Ecommerce platforms. The company was also estimated at an impressive $1 billion.

For a short period of time, Fab was also considered one of the fastest growing social networks and reached 1 million registered users faster than Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon.

Since its conception the company has found it difficult to direct itself with a single business model. The popularity of flash sales in the US fizzled down, with the introduction of coupon services like Groupon becoming big business.

In an interesting turn, a day before announcing the layoffs Fab had released a new line of sofas. While it is not certain if furniture is the direction Fab will be taking, the company will have to decide on a business model before it is too late.