“We had no business doing that. In hindsight it was not just the money spent, it was the time sunk and the attention sunk,” Goldberg said. “We should have been spending all of our time on how to get the business to a really repeatable standard process in the U.S. And instead we were fighting on two fronts with half a leg and half an arm.”
That year, Fab was trying to turn an expected $80 million in domestic sales into $100 million; in Europe, it hoped to get $40 million. It expanded into food, pet goods, and sex toys. “It resulted in a deterioration of the merchandise—the brand value, the assortment,” Goldberg said. “And frankly, at the end of 2012, that got kind of kitschy.”
Anyone who would challenge Goldberg’s numbers would get scolded for not believing in the vision. “You can get somewhat delusional in thinking that you can just figure it out,” Goldberg said. “You see that you're growing, and if you can figure out a way to keep growing, you can grow your way through it.”
Three years after Fab started to unravel, Goldberg has different priorities he said. He isn’t focused on being as big as Amazon and Alibaba. He started Pepo with $1 million of his own money, and he’s going to be careful not to take anything for granted, he said.
“I’ve had people ask me: How do I know Pepo is going to be successful?” Goldberg said. “I don’t know if Pepo is going to be successful. Now I just think: We’re going to build a good product.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.