Faire Eyes IPO Within a Year After $750M Revenue and First Breakeven

Faire generated $750 million in annualized revenue last quarter, up 49% year over year, and broke even on an EBITDA basis for the first time — the numbers CEO Max Rhodes is betting will carry the online wholesale marketplace to an IPO within the next 12 months.

The company, founded in 2017, was most recently valued at $5.2 billion in November via a $100 million tender offer. That figure sits at less than half its peak valuation of $12.6 billion in May 2022. Eighteen months before that peak, Faire had been worth $1 billion — a twelvefold climb in a year and a half that Rhodes now describes as an industry-wide mania.

"It was like the fog of war or the fog of crazy valuations, and the tech industry collectively losing its mind," Rhodes told Fortune. "We got a little addicted to vanity metrics to pump growth."

What does Faire actually do?

Faire operates a digital wholesale marketplace connecting independent retailers — typically one- or two-location shops such as New York's Strand bookstore or the National Archives Museum store in Washington, D.C. — with independent brands in categories including decor, food, beauty, jewelry and apparel. Brands pay a commission on items sold through the platform. Roughly 500,000 retailers and 100,000 brands now use the site.

The model resembles Shopify's: it powers smaller businesses' commerce and democratizes technology once reserved for larger retail players. The name is the French verb "to do," a nod to trade shows, which remain the dominant way independent retailers source inventory.

The founding story explains the thesis. Rhodes previously sold high-end umbrellas and recalls a trade show at New York's Javits Center where he paid a $15,000 fee and took only $2,000 in orders. He later moved into tech, including a stint as an early product lead at Square working on Cash App.

Why did growth nearly sink the company?

Early on, Faire signed brands at breakneck speed. The result, Rhodes recalls, was retailer churn and high marketing costs to keep recruiting new buyers — a growth model that produced questionable decision-making that could have jeopardized the company over time.

"Faire felt like a runaway train," Rhodes said of the period. The only way to slow it to a sustainable speed, in his words, was to focus on "high-quality supply." In 2022, Faire removed many brands from the platform, deliberately shrank the company, cut jobs, and introduced technology aimed at retaining customers long-term.

The fix appears to be working, at least by the company's own account. "Reorder rates for the products retailers are buying have gone way up and that's leading them to come back," Rhodes said.

The caveat: revenue growth and a single quarter of EBITDA breakeven are management's figures, not audited public results. Faire has not disclosed gross merchandise volume, churn data, or the current size of its workforce after the cuts. Wall Street will demand all three before any listing prices.

What happens next?

Finance chief Jason Lee said he is preparing Faire for an IPO but declined to commit to a specific timeline — a hedge that leaves the 12-month window as an aspiration rather than a filing plan. The company's stated goal for an IPO and beyond is to keep the discipline it found in 2022.

"The No. 1 thing on the path to durable success in business is solving problems for customers," Rhodes said. "Retailers don't care about how much they're buying, they care about the quality of what they are buying and whether it actually sells."

If the reorder data holds and EBITDA breakeven persists beyond one quarter, Faire could become a test case for whether a disciplined marketplace can command a valuation between its $5.2 billion floor and its $12.6 billion peak. If it slips back into vanity metrics, investors have two data points showing where that road ends.