Fab.com has become one of those jaw-drop­ping suc­cess sto­ries capa­ble of evok­ing twinges of envy and awe-struck admi­ra­tion at once; just over a year since its trans­for­ma­tion from gay social net­work to high-fly­ing, design-focused e‑commerce site, it’s announced record-break­ing U.S. rev­enue for Christ­mas Day from its mobile apps alone.

In news that will leave many an aspir­ing e‑commerce man­ag­er, web con­tent man­ag­er and e‑commerce ana­lyst sit­ting back open mouthed, Fab has just declared that no less than 56 per cent of the thriv­ing startup’s US rev­enue on Christ­mas Day came via its mobile apps, the largest sin­gle-day cash-inflow it’s seen to date.

Mak­ing mobile work

Fab’s co-founder and CEO, Jason Gold­berg, has placed much empha­sis on the poten­tial of mobile apps to dri­ve busi­ness.  The company’s first apps were launched in Octo­ber 2011 and exact­ly one year lat­er, they con­tributed 33 per cent of the site’s vis­its and 33 per cent of its sales.  Gold­berg was con­fi­dent then that mobile would short­ly gen­er­ate 50 per cent of the site’s rev­enue.  It turns out he was wrong – it just deliv­ered over 50 per cent in a sin­gle day.

There’s still some way to go before Goldberg’s vision is tru­ly real­ized – a sin­gle swal­low doesn’t make a sum­mer, to man­gle the old say­ing, and Christ­mas Day is a hard act to fol­low for the oth­er 364 days of the year. But the company’s redesign of its iOS app this Octo­ber undoubt­ed­ly appears to be pay­ing rich div­i­dends. The new apps have a friend­lier user inter­face designed to encour­age brows­ing, and they pro­vide vir­tu­al shop­pers with social feeds so they can catch a glimpse of what fash­ions their friends are buying.

To the stratos­phere and beyond

Fab has, frankly, enjoyed stratos­pher­ic suc­cess since its change of direc­tion from social net­work to e‑commerce site.  The site now has brag­ging rights over some spec­tac­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful results, with 7.5 mil­lion users in no few­er than 26 countries.

But that’s not all. Sales are also soar­ing: on Cyber Mon­day 2011, it made $350,000; by 2012, the same day gen­er­at­ed £1.3 mil­lion in sales, a 350 per cent increase and the firm’s first mil­lion-dol­lar day of trading.