Faire: the economic engine for a million local retailers.
Doubling down on Lightspeed’s investment in Faire, the leading wholesale marketplace for independent brands and retailers.
Today, the WSJ announced a $150 million Series D round for Faire, led by our friends at Founders Fund, with a significant investment from Lightspeed, Y-Combinator, Forerunner Ventures, and more.
When Lightspeed first partnered with Faire in 2018, we were convinced that small is the next big thing in retail. We also knew that the off-cited retail apocalypse isn’t evenly distributed.
Small retail, in fact, is thriving in the age of Amazon.
Over a million U.S. independent retailers transact over a $1 trillion in annual sales, with none of the tools or financial resources of larger players. Faire levels the playing field by building an economic engine for these retailers. It matches them with products that are guaranteed to sell in store; and, with net 60 payment terms, Faire provides them with working capital to fund their growth. Driven by this value proposition, the vast majority of Faire’s retailers have joined the platform through word-of-mouth or referral.
This year, Faire expanded to serve over 50,000 retailers domestically. To put that number in perspective, if all the retailers on Faire constituted a single chain, it would be the largest retailer by “doors” in the entire country — more than Subway (26,932 stores), Dollar General (15,472), McDonalds (14,155), or Starbucks (13,172). Faire has remarkably achieved this scale in under 3 years.
More than 15 million products have been sold through Faire from over 7,000 brands. It has launched new categories like apparel and kids and has activated its first international makers in Canada. Overall, Faire has grown 4x year-over-year and sold $1 million in a single day for the first time last month.
The team has also grown by leaps and bounds. From under 40 a year ago, Faire is now 180+ employees across offices in San Francisco, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Salt Lake City.
joined as CFO from Fanatics, the global leader in sports merchandise with over $2 billion in revenues. — who originally co-founded Faire alongside , Daniele Perito, and Marcelo Cortes — re-joined the company as COO after spending time at Opendoor, where he led the company’s growth and operations from 2 to 20+ cities.
At Lightspeed, we are thrilled to continue to support this exceptional team, which is on a mission to accelerate the growth of the local retail economy.
Oh, and guess what? Faire is hiring. Check out the company’s career page here:
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