Fab Revamps Mobile Shops Ahead of Holidays

For most Internet companies, mobile is synonymous with the future. For Fab, an online shop that sells designer furniture, housewares and other items, it's synonymous with “right now.”

The company opened up the Android and iOS versions of its shop last October. Now nearly 33 percent of the company's daily visits and sales are handled by those applications.

“There's too much distraction on the Web, multiple browsers and tabs that take away from your focus. The mobile experience captures your full attention,” said Jason Goldberg, one of the founders and the chief executive of Fab. “At some point, we think it'll be 50 percent.”

To capitalize on that, Fab is giving its mobile applications a face-lift, one that it is rolling out for shoppers beginning on Thursday.

The freshly minted applications include more sophisticated browsing, including searches by color, and social features that let shoppers see what items their friends are saving and p urchasing. The company hopes that these will encourage people to buy more and linger longer, which they already do on the iPad. That device is the most popular of all the mobile shopping portals, capturing nearly 40 percent of all its mobile sales.

The redesign is meant in part to appeal to holiday shoppers. To prepare for the season, Fab is stocking a warehouse in New Jersey with goods and nearly 200 workers to ensure that orders are delivered within a few days. In the company's early days, orders were shipped out by their respective vendors and could take weeks to arrive.

Fab, which says it will sell $150 million worth of items this year alone, is hoping to drive up its sales even further and push toward profitability. That goal has been elusive, given how much the company spends on advertising and marketing. Mr. Goldberg declined to say how much money the company was likely to lose this year, although he did say that it was expected to be profitable in the ne xt few years.

“We would break even now if we didn't spend a third of our budget on advertising,” Mr. Goldberg said. The company has spent $15 million on Facebook advertisements and is dipping a toe into television ads, which will start running after the election.

Mr. Goldberg said that given the company's traction with users, he was not worried about the finances of the business, especially given its venture backing. In July the company raised more than $100 million, adding to the $56 million in financing that it had already landed. Its site has close to eight million members, and 50 percent of those joined in the last three months, according to Mr. Goldberg.