Inspired - Sophia Amoruso

I have always been inspired by young entrepeneurs, in particular woman entrepeneurs. I love to read about their journey's and how they grew something they were passionate about and are now fortunate to be able to do something they love every day ... and on their terms. 

One of my favourites that I am always seeking stories on is Nasty Gal founder, Sophia Amoruso. So I'd like to share with you a little about her ...

In 2006 at the age of 22 Sophia Amoruso took her love of vintage fashion and started her ebay store in her apartment with just a few hundred dollars. She did everything herself - searched goodwill for her merchandise, shot and styled each look, wrote product descriptions and did her best to spread the word online (hmm this all sounds very familiar!)

Sophia didn't attend business college - she was an art student for a short period of time - but she has built her business on her passion and love of vintage clothing, the desire to not work for anyone else and the simple equation of you buy something and sell it for more!

The name Nasty Gal comes from Bette Davis 1975 album "Nasty Gal". Bette Davis was an ex-model and wife of Miles Davis. It represented the edge and style that Amoruso was so solidly building of her brand. 

Amoruso has built the brand on the backs of Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook and translated "likes" into sales. Nasty Gal has a constant online conversation with its customers - they update their social networks five times per day and aims to get dressed with their customers everyday. 

Sophia sells 93% of it's inventory at full priced and refuses to do even the standard gimmicky marketing plays such as discounts for friend referrals. Nasty Gal has 250,000 customers visit the site once a day for at least 7 minutes. Top 10% visit the site more than 100 times in a month! Can we call this success? 

After a year and a half on ebay, Sophia had 30,000 friends on Myspace and was doing roughly $115,000 in sales.  In 2008 she was kicked off ebay (a blessing in disguise) and ditched Myspace for Facebook. 

5 years later, Nasty Gal has an estimated net worth of $250 million. The company is debt free and has been profitable from the start.

Love these 3 things :

♥ No asshole policy!!

♥ Everyone is individual and it's encouraged

♥ Bring your dog to work :)

I am in awe of Sophia and what she has achieved. It gives me such inspiration that I too can achieve what I want to achieve! We all can.

nastygal.com