Softbank Backs Headless Commerce Unicorn Fabric

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Faisal Masud has said that the term "headless commerce" is really not an accurate representation of what his company, fabric, provides for commerce. 

"The traditional monolithic business platforms (Oracle, SAP, etc.) are where a big box [retailer] holds many smaller boxes inside of it. So if one box broke, you broke the [entire thing]," he explained to Modern Shipper last year.

Instead, Masud likes to call his company's approach "composable commerce" – the business logic remains separate, allowing brands to use APIs and cloud-based platforms to build custom experiences.

That composable commerce approach is paying off. Just 219 days after it closed a series B round of funding, fabric announced on Thursday a fresh $140 million series C, led by Softbank with participation from Forerunner Ventures, Glynn Capital and existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Norwest Ventures and Stripes. The new funding values the Seattle-based company at $1.5 billion.

Total funding is now $293 million.

"We truly appreciate the vote of confidence that Softbank and our other world-class investors have in our vision, our execution and our experienced team," Masud said in a release. "This round will allow us to increase the velocity of our innovation and product development while we continue to create technology that, unlike our competitors, bends to the needs of our customers, not the other way around. Fabric truly is the future of digital commerce and our new customers Chico's, McDonald's, TriMark, L'azurde and most recently The Honest Company are embracing it."

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Related:

Read: Top VCs fund $100M Series B round in headless commerce platform Fabric

Read: Moving from ‘e-commerce in a box' to ‘composable commerce'

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The new funding will be used to increase product development, especially around automation and intelligence tools, and expanding fabric's geographic footprint.

Global e-commerce is estimated to have surpassed $5 trillion in 2021 and B2B e-commerce is expected to reach $20.9 trillion by 2027. Shopify, fabric says, is great for small businesses but difficult to scale on, and Amazon maintains more control over a brand's e-commerce experience than many are comfortable with. Fabric, on the other hand, has built its platform to allow brands to scale and add components as needed, rather than buying an "e-commerce in a box" solution.

"Digital has been a key to the Honest foundation from our very beginning. As we continue to invest in delivering on our vision of providing our consumers and partners with an innovative digital experience, fabric stood out as the clear choice to support us in doing so," said Pete Gerstberger, chief digital and strategy officer for The Honest Company. "We are confident that the strength and ability of fabric's product offerings will help us deliver leading-edge digital experiences for Honest consumers to help us engage them at all stages of their lives, no matter where they are."

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Watch: E-commerce update

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Since fabric closed its $100 million series B in July 2021, it said it has achieved 4.5x year-over-year revenue growth.

"Retailers need to meet modern consumers wherever they are – whether online, offline, mobile, social or any future entry point. This means merchants of all sizes, and especially midmarket and enterprise, need the right commerce platform to keep pace with evolving trends," said Robert Kaplan, investment director at SoftBank Investment Advisers. "We believe that fabric has built the industry's best API-first modular commerce platform and accompanying commerce applications to give merchants unrivaled power and flexibility, all in a manner that reduces the pain of migrating over from legacy, outdated commerce platforms."

Kaplan has joined the board of directors as part of Softbank's investment.

Click for more articles by Brian Straight.

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This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.