February 22, 2023
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Sophia Amoruso started Nasty Gal in 2006 after several years working menial jobs and a short career shoplifting. She dropped out of college and started selling vintage items online, developing a sharp eye for old items with present-day value.
Sophia chose the name 'Nasty Gal' from a song by Betty Davis, and developed a sexy retro look for her brand that featured models she found on MySpace. She developed a massive following there, whilst she managed everything from the photography to the styling to shipping the items. The models wore daring red lipstick with unintuitive but ultimately refreshing clothing combinations, that appealed to a huge audience of young women.
Sophia photographed, styled, captioned and shipped about 25 different items weekly from her store. She created the store’s fashion around her own style, that included such things as blood-red lipstick, floor-length trench coats, and rock style vintage T- shirt. She attracted readers to her site inviting them to create names for her vintage products in exchange for gift cards for her products.
The main website launched in 2008 on shopnastygal.com, before Sophia purchased nastygal.com from, of course, a porn company. On the first day, inventory sold out and she was getting requests from celebrity stylists: she realised it would be easier to cultivate the brand by offering new items too.
In 2012, the company reported revenues of over $100 million. In fact, based on the data we have available, I've been able to make this groovy graph.
Some facts:
Wowsers!
Here's the lessons we take from Nasty Gal's success.
Sophia knew the audience she was selling to, and knew that it was underserved. Looking back, she comments: "Every other fashion brand out there - including those that I call competitors - are run by mostly old white men, and the customer knows it". In a recent Business of Fashion article, Sophia says: "It's going on seven years for me that I've been selling clothing to the same awesome girl. And we've understood the kind of silhouettes and cuts that she likes over time".
The video at the end of this post includes Sophia explaining that their typical customer is...
Sounds a bit like Sophia herself - the lesson here is you need to know your audience and that's easy if they are like yourself. It also makes it easy to be authentic, something that people are crying out for and something that the world of business and marketing is often not.
Sophia doesn't haven't an MBA - that probably does her a favour - but she knows the basics of business.
My philosophy is that you sell things for more than you bought themThe beauty of the business model is that it is profitable from day one, something that is not so common in the era of the tech company.
She searched for couture brands using misspellings, hoping to pick up bargain items from clueless sellers. She famously bought a Chanel jacket at a Salvation Army store for $8 and sold it on for $1,000. She analysed conversion rates and realised that "put it on the right girl, with the right hair and the right attitude, showing people how they could wear it—that was everything".
Because Sophia knew her target audience she was able to siphon through tons of clothes and developed a pin-sharp sense of what eBay users were willing to pay a premium for. For this reason, Nasty Gal has been profitable from the start, which makes it easier to grow either organically or via investment.
Something new is happening that I'm just clueing into now—this probably won't go down well—but customers don't care any more about reviews or hard-copy publications. They care what picture Rihanna just Instagrammed while she's naked in bed, what new shoes she has on, how she's talking about them. That's what they respond toWho said that?... Tom Ford, a hitherto well featured designer in aforementioned reviews and hard-copy publications.
Nasty Gal does the following to boost their social life:
Just look at this state of the art website.
It's a modern website that any millennial would be impressed with:
This is an authentic company with a refreshing take on the world on e-commerce. With the right attitude what's to stop your retail company following in their footsteps?
