• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, July 19, 2012

Showing continued interest in flash-sale sites, design-oriented Fab.com just raised an impressive $105 million in new funding.

“The investment was led by Atomico, an international venture firm launched by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, and values the company at $600 million,” reports The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog, citing sources.

“Much like a marriage, a nine-figure VC investment is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly,” TechCrunch cautions. “In his blog post, [Fab CEO Jason] Goldberg made a point of tempering the flashy funding announcement with a statement of Fab’s grounded focus.”

As part of its investment, Atomico “is also helping Fab expand its site globally,” reports CNet.

This is the third major round of the funding for the company, according to VatorNews. “Just last December, Fab raised $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz for a site that took a while to really find its sweet spot in highly-curated, design-centric items.”

It’s been a long, winding road for Fab. As Mashable recalls, “Fab famously pivoted from a gay social network into an ecommerce site with millions of members and doing thousands of sales every single day.”

What’s Fab’s new end-goal? “Becoming nothing less than the world’s next big design brand,” according to GigaOm.

Saying as much, Goldberg stated in his blog post: “We believe that Fab can become the definitive global brand synonymous with design.”