Fabric, a headless commerce platform purpose-built for growth, launched its cloud-native experience and commerce product suite and announced $9.5 million in seed funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Sierra Ventures and Expa. In addition, e-commerce executive Faisal Masud, who led multi-billion-dollar commerce businesses at Amazon, eBay, Groupon, and Staples, has joined the company as CEO. Alex Bard, partner and managing director at Redpoint Ventures, and Tim Guleri, managing partner at Sierra Ventures, will join Fabric’s board of directors.

D2C and B2B brands are struggling to grow in the age of Amazon because their commerce platforms aren’t designed for their needs. These outdated systems create an operational nightmare, requiring excessive time and money for retailers to deliver great customer experiences. Meanwhile, the largest retailers continue to invest in their own proprietary systems, widening their advantage in data, speed, pricing and convenience. COVID-19 has further raised the stakes; during the pandemic, e-commerce sales have grown as much as 55% year-over-year, and shoppers have spent an additional $107 billion online. Many brands can’t keep up with this sudden surge; they’re constrained by their commerce technology infrastructure and failing to reach their potential in the $3.5 trillion global e-commerce market.

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“Unlike Amazon, which wins on selection, price and availability, emerging and growing D2C and B2B companies need to win on brand and experience,” said Faisal Masud, CEO at Fabric. “Legacy commerce platforms are stifling growth, making it impossible for them to scale the experiences their customers really want. We’ve walked in their shoes, and we’re excited to help them transform their businesses with a platform designed for how they need to grow.”

Fabric is enabling global commerce brands, including abc carpet & home, BuildDirect, and GNC, to deliver next-generation customer experiences for a fraction of the cost and time, without having to re-platform or drain valuable engineering resources. With an open, modular design that’s live in weeks and an executive team of e-commerce veterans, general managers from Amazon, eBay, and Staples, Fabric is proven to grow digital commerce revenue by up to 3x.

Masud brings over 20 years of experience building and operating leading commerce businesses. He joined Fabric from Wing (a Google X Moonshot that later graduated to an Alphabet company), where, as a chief operating officer he launched the global drone delivery program for major retailers in food and pharmacy. Prior to Wing, he was chief digital officer and later chief technology officer at Staples, responsible for building out the company’s third-party vendor platform, and establishing full omnichannel capability for its more than 2,000 North American stores. He spent seven years at Amazon, where he built Amazon Warehouse, Amazon’s Reverse Logistics platform, and was part of the AmazonBasics earlier founding team. Masud also held leadership roles at Groupon and eBay.

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Fabric’s headless commerce platform enables marketers and merchants to deliver world-class commerce experiences without the engineering burden. Its modular API-first platform enables brands to utilize tools that address their specific needs, rather than re-platforming. Fabric gives brands sophisticated capabilities such as its Experience Manager (XM), Product Information Manager (PIM), Offers, and Order Management System (OMS). The Fabric platform offers a suite of commerce APIs that allow brands to orchestrate their commerce across all channels, enabling them to support the entire lifecycle of each customer. In addition, Fabric runs on a completely serverless infrastructure to effectively scale during high-traffic retail peaks.

“Fabric brings something completely new and invaluable to the multi-trillion-dollar retail market,” said Alex Bard, partner, and managing director at Redpoint Ventures. “The fact that Fabric is a force multiplier on retailers’ existing technology investments and can be live in weeks versus months gives it an incredible advantage over legacy platforms that can’t keep up with the demands of consumers today. Since Faisal and the team bring deep operating experience from the world’s top e-commerce companies, the platform is built for the way retailers need to grow.”

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