Customer experience is everything for Seattle-based e-commerce startup fabric. On Thursday, the company secured $140 million in a Series C round to further its platform and customer experience. It also became Seattle’s newest tech unicorn.
Fabric is an e-commerce platform that helps mid-sized businesses and brands revamp their digital storefronts and reach more customers. Fabric does this by creating stacks of APIs that brands can pick and choose from to best fit their specific needs. The startup works around the philosophy of “headless” e-commerce, which means that digital platforms can be easily updated when new features are added.
The $140 million Series C round propelled the startup to a $1.5 billion valuation and included participation from Softbank, Forerunner Ventures, Glynn Captial, Redpoint Ventures and Stripes.
“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 mid-market and enterprise, need the right commerce platform to keep pace with evolving trends,” Robert Kaplan, Softbank’s investment director, said in a statement. “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.”
According to the company, fabric’s platform is mainly for B2C vendors whose needs aren’t met by competing platforms such as Shopify or Oracle. Current clients include GNC, Pier 1 Imports and others. Fabric also recently gained McDonald’s, Chico’s and The Honest Company as new clients.
Fabric was launched in 2017 and has been wildly successful at securing funding. Last February, it secured $43 million in a Series A round. And in July, the startup secured $100 million in a Series B round to expand into Asia.
With the latest funding, fabric now has its sight set on product development. In a statement, the company said that funds from the Series C round will be used to incorporate automation into the platform. New additions to the platform will focus on improving the user experience for customers, an area that will be crucial for business in the post-Covid world, according to fabric CEO Faisal Masud.
“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,” Masud said.
