Fab.com Relaunches With Daily Deals & Design Inspiration

Fab.com‘s creators have just taken the wraps off a new portal for daily deals — up to 70% off retail in some cases — for those who crave beautiful, well-designed things.

Visitors can see current flash sales, and they can also get an idea of upcoming sales for the next week. Prices aren’t revealed until the sale goes live.

Sales run for three days, and currently selling items range in price from a modest $8 (a book on jewelry made from non-precious materials, 60% off retail) to $624 (a vase by “ceramics superstar” Hella Jongerius, 35% off retail). One of today’s sales is a huge selection of signed Milton “I Heart NY” Glaser posters, which cost between $105 and $120 each.

Users can earn cash — not virtual currency but real cash — by inviting friends to join the site. The cash can be applied toward Fab.com purchases.

In addition to daily design deals, users can also enjoy and add to the Inspiration Wall. Half crowdsourced mood board, half design-geek Tumblr, the Inspiration Wall allows users to upload and browse inspiring images.

Fab.com has gone through some major transitions since its launch last June. In fact, it began life as Fabulis, a web trend-infused social network for gay men.

And when we say “trend-infused,” we mean that Fabulis gave its members every hot social feature possible, from Q&A to virtual currency to event planning. The founders eventually added a gay men-specific daily deals feature, too.

While we loved the idea, Fab.com founder and serial entrepreneur Jason Goldberg said, “Gay rights progress over the past year had a positive impact on the gay community but a negative impact on the demand for our services.” In other words, LGBT folks are living “out” more and more on mainstream sites, so the demand for niche networks has diminished.

Still, those daily deals seemed like a great direction, so that’s where Fab.com pivoted.

Due to an incentivized pre-launch promotion, the new Fab.com already boasts 200,000 members. The company also has partnerships with 175 artists, designers and retailers.

Ashton Kutcher’s angel fund, A Grade, has joined SoftTechVC and First Round Capital, The Washington Post Company, Baroda Ventures and others in a new round of seed financing leading up to the launch today. Kutcher will also advise the company.

Additionally, Goldberg tells Mashable exclusively, ” I’ve now invested more than half my personal earnings from selling socialmedian into Fab.com.”