NASTY GAL: ULTRA COOL GLOBAL ONLINE DISTRIBUTION FOR WOMEN'S CLOTHING. EUROPEAN AESTHETICS MEET AMERICANA. A HUGE SUCCESS STORY FOR 28 YEAR-OLD AMERICANGREEK SOPHIA AMORUSO.

Hard work, vision, passion, business acumen, and extremely good taste, helped Sophia Amoruso to set the foundations  for the NASTY GAL fashion biz phenomenon and online-soon to be-empire . An inspiring story for all young women entrepreneurs out there.

Nasty Gal is a global online destination for fashion-forward, free-thinking girls. In 2006, founder Sophia Amoruso started an eBay store selling a highly curated selection of vintage pieces. In just five short years, the shop has grown to become an international style source offering both new and vintage clothing, shoes, and accessories.

 Nasty Gal founder and owner Sophia Amoruso has always been somewhat of an explorer. As a kid, she spent countless hours discovering various treasures in a room full of random knick-knacks in her grandfather's motel. Ever a fan of the hunt, she loved that each item had a story imbuing it with a unique value that new stuff simply didn't have. As she grew up, that curiosity turned to wanderlust as she bounced from city to city working at photo labs and record stores, in search of new experiences, new people, and inspiration.

At the age of 23, Sophia settled in San Francisco and turned her love of vintage and her fantastic eye into the eBay store Nasty Gal Vintage. With only her killer instinct and intense passion for the project (along with a few hundred bucks), she moved out of the city and set up Nasty Gal's headquarters in her apartment. She did everything herself: mined for gems at Goodwill, shot & styled each look, wrote product descriptions, and did her best to spread the word online. Each week, her stock would spark bidding wars among tastemakers across the globe—from Australia all the way to New York. Soon she started asking friends for help. Eventually, those friends became employees. Nasty Gal moved into its own studio space and its own URL, leaving eBay in the dust to build what would become one of the most coveted online retail destinations of our time.

Since Nasty Gal's humble beginnings, Sophia has brought on a passionate team of creative visionaries who love what they do, the company they work for, and the pitch-perfect fashion that can be found throughout the site. Sophia continues to be deeply involved with the design, buying, styling, and overall vision of the Nasty Gal brand, but loves most to meet the girls–the customers–that have inspired Nasty Gal to be what it is today.

Photos from www.nastygal.com

Video from FORBES. Sophia Amoruso gives styling tips to Forbes's Victoria Barrett.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2012/06/28/nasty-gals-sophia-amoruso-fashions-new-phenom/
(...) Which is nothing compared with what Nasty Gal has done for 28-year-old founder Sophia Amoruso. In four years her spunky retail fashion site has streaked across the Web, pushing new ways to sell trendy but inexpensive clothing. The company is on its way to quadrupling sales this year to $128 million, racking up gross margins of more than 60%, up there with retail’s most profitable ventures. Nasty Gal has done this with very little advertising and nearly no ­discounting in an industry forced to succumb to daily dealmaking. Instead, Amoruso has built a brand on the backs of Instagram, ­Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook—and translated “likes” into sales.

Amoruso is slumped in a chair at the end of the table in a fitted black chiffon dress paired with chunky, white lace-up shoes and bright pink lipstick. The girls in the room are hanging on her every gesture. Her trajectory is a fashion girl’s dream come true, but her story is largely unknown outside her fan base. For all of Nasty Gal’s constant online conversations with customers—the company updates its social network pages five times a day and aims to “get dressed” with them every morning—Amoruso is notably quiet, even shy. “Do you guys work out?” she inquires near the end of the session. Heads bob in agreement before a flurry of passionate pleas imploring her to take on the current athletic apparel giant Lululemon.

This is Nasty Gal’s first real focus group, prompted by the upcoming launch of a line Amoruso designed herself. She’s stunned to hear shoppers parrot what she’s tried to infuse into ripped halter tops and chain mail cutoff shorts: “empowering and fierce,” “sexy just for me.” After the group leaves she muses, “It’s as if they read my mind. I never use those words publicly, but I am always thinking them.” (...)


 http://sophiaamoruso.tumblr.com/

Sophia's photos are from FOAM MAGAZINE
http://foammagazine.com/articles/1627-timezone-nasty-gal-s-sophia-amoruso