How Sophia Amoruso built her fashion empire Nasty Gal starting from scratch

Sophia Amoruso is the founder and the chairman at Nasty Gal the 100 million dollars fashion online empire ! if you love shopping online you can’t miss Nasty Gal! Please have a look and tell me that this is the coolest site ever!

You will be surprised to know how Sophia Amoruso built her fashion empire  Nasty Gal starting from scratch and how she has grown her business from rummaging through the rubbish bins to CEO of 350 employees! Moreover you’ll be happy to know that she’s 31 currently! She’s a young business woman! A Girl Boss that started when was 22 from the street and without a degree !

Sophia Amoruso was born in 1984 in San Diego.

She showed her disinterest in school from her first years “I hate high school and I went to a psychiatrist whose diagnosis is depression and attention deficit syndrome” cit. Sophia Amoruso from her book #GIRLBOSS

After the divorce of her parents, when she was 17, she decided to live alone. She didn’t have a common future CEO life. She changed lots of cities  hitchhiking on the street, she left or was  fired from every job and stole for a period until she was caught and decided to stop.

You won’t believe it but Nasty Gal idea comes from a hernia! She lived in San Francisco, she was unemployed and she need an health insurance to treat the hernia. She found a job as documents controller  of an art faculty. She spent lots of time on internet and she joined MySpace where she started to receive lots of friends request from Ebay Vintage Sellers.

When she got the health insurance she left the job, treated the hernia and she come back to her mother house. During this month she had the genial idea!

She was thinking about the Ebay Vintage Sellers on MySpace and she thought” I can start an Ebay Vintage Store too!” That was the starting point! She bought the eBay for Dummies

book and started Nasty Gal on Ebay selling vintage clothes! Vintage has always been her passion, while her mother brought her to the shopping center she preferred vintage shops!

She started to look for used clothing around shops of the city and she sold them on eBay taking care of photos and descriptions ! She  dedicated hours to take the perfect photos, organizing photo shoots at her house or in the garden and her friends with tattoos were the first models who paid offering a hamburger!

She waited the auction days and answered all the customers questions as thought they were friends ensuring their trust! She observed what customers like or not and she removed from the shop everything that people didn’t like and she never bought something similar anymore!

One day she bought 2 Chanel jackets for 8$ . The auction started from  9,99$ , she sold a jacket for more than 1500$!!

Finding new clothes, editing photos, add friends on MySpace , Sophia Amoruso spent her days like these for 2 years . On June 13, 2008 she opened her own website leaving Ebay! The merchandise was sold out like hot cakes on the first day !

Few months after she hired her first employee Christina Ferrucci that still works with Sophia , today is the purchasing manager! After 6 months they decided to add new clothes to the store and not only vintage.

We approached to the stand of Jeffrey Campbell, aware that it was a brand with which we wanted to work. They said no instantly. One thing you need to know about me is that when I hear someone say “no”, I rarely listening. We need a special form of stubbornness to succeed as an entrepreneur. And anyway, if you do not ask you do not get. I turned back and I showed Jeffrey what he was missing out on nastygalvintage.com with my smartphone . After a while we were the new online retailer of Jeffrey Campbell, and we are still one of its largest customers. “#GIRLBOSS

They bought few clothes at a time to see what was selling and what is not. What they didn’t sell was never repurchased again! They moved lots of time from a building to another because they always need more space, they teamed up and the business continued to grow, and Sophia learned more and more!

Now they are in Los Angeles and almost 400 people work together at Nasty Gal !

Today Sophia Amoruso is 31 years old and she’s a Girl Boss, a business woman, CEO of an empire that she has created from nothing thanks to lots of work and passion!

“Nasty Gal was my MBA. I learned to don’t  be afraid to stop someone in the middle of a presentation to ask him to explain it again because I do not understand what he’s talking about. And if I still do not understand I ask him to repeat again …  the decisions I make involve so much money and people, I can not afford to pretend to understand if it is not. When you manage a company of this size, you’re not the only one to pay for your mistakes ”
#GIRLBOSS

I believe that her story is a source of inspiration for all the women! Even if you don’t want to be a CEO , Sophia teaches us to fight for what we want and to believe and work very very very hard! [Tweet “Fortune favors the action”]

I learned a lot from her book and I really recommend it ! It’s smart , simple and I’ve never read a book like this ! She will teach you lots about how to face life and work and how to be successful #GIRLBOSS

I learned that if you believe in yourself , people will do this too! Don’t be afraid to ask and to show what you can do !

I’ll write another post with all the advices from her book!

Hope you liked this post and that you’ll share it with all the woman! We are all be able to be GirlBoss! Come on girls, we believe in girls power !

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