StackCommerce Acquires The Fascination, Adding Scale to the Thoughtful Alternative to Amazon

With the acquisition, StackCommerce adds scale and distribution to The Fascination’s curated online marketplace for today’s top culture-defining DTC brands

StackCommerce, the leading commerce and content platform for digital publishers, announced that it has acquired The Fascination, the fast-growing discovery and commerce marketplace for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. The move follows last year’s acquisition of BrandCycle, the premium affiliate marketing and influencer network, furthering the company’s mission to build an all-in-one commerce solution for content creators of all sizes. This latest acquisition adds unique, premium DTC brands to existing shops and affiliate offerings for publishers, a big step toward Stack’s mission.

Launched in 2020 as a platform for new and emerging brands to be discovered and purchased, The Fascination quickly established itself as the curated marketplace and media partner of choice for trending brands like Keeps, Native, Brooklinen, Leesa, CUTS, and The Ridge. Of the 1,000+ brands that have applied to work with The Fascination, it currently features around 200 brands on the site, which are personally tested and curated by the team.

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“This latest acquisition adds unique, premium DTC brands to existing shops and affiliate offerings for publishers, furthering Stack’s mission to build an all-in-one commerce solution for content creators of all sizes.”

The Fascination, named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Retail Companies of 2022, has seen its traffic grow 25% per month recently. Joining StackCommerce gives the brand the financial and operational backbone to scale while maintaining its outstanding customer experience and content. It’s already widely popular with merchants, and the vastly increased exposure from becoming part of Stack’s network will make it the number-one outlet for anyone looking to sell DTC. The acquisition provides The Fascination and its top-tier brands access and distribution to 200+ leading digital media publishers.

With the addition of The Fascination, publisher and brand partners at StackCommerce can now opt in to new CPC and whitelisting opportunities, bolstering Stack’s fast-growing performance media division, StackMedia. And the increased ability to produce in-depth product reviews based on extensive testing provides an exciting new way to present brands to readers. Built on Shopify tech, the marketplace enables Stack to integrate more seamlessly with sellers on the platform.

For shoppers, the marketplace offers the ability to search by values that matter to them, like sustainability, diversity, and more. And knowing that the in-house team has personally tested products helps consumers purchase with confidence and establish deeper trust.

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“I’m so proud of the team at The Fascination who, in just over a year, have created one of the most important places for discerning shoppers to discover and buy the most talked-about new culture-defining brands,” said David Wolfe, co-founder and CEO of The Fascination. “StackCommerce gives us the kind of exposure to consumers that it would have taken us years to build.”

“The Fascination has built out a well-curated collection of quality-proven DTC brands and premium content that will now be accessible to all of Stack’s publisher partners, bringing us another step closer to being the go-to commerce solution for anyone with an engaged audience,” said Karl House, President of StackCommerce. “We’re really excited about the product discovery, SEO expertise, impeccable design, and trendsetting energy the team brings to the table and can’t wait to see how consumers respond to these new brands.”

The Fascination was advised by Kaleo Legal. Latham & Watkins acted as legal advisor to StackCommerce.