prESS PACK
By Emma Louise Nelson
UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD School of Art, Design and Architecture Department of Design Nasty Gal UK Press Pack Emma Louise Nelson A Major Project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for BA (Hons) Fashion, Communication and Promotion Module THD1101 Fashion Communication and Promotion Major Project The candidate confirms that the work submitted is their own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. The University of Huddersfield School of Art and Design Department of Design Huddersfield West Yorkshire England
(16th May 2014)
the facts. Nasty Gal was founded in 2006 when a young Sophia Amoruso sold one-of-a-kind vintage on eBay to likeminded style savvy girls who she communicated with on Myspace. Amoruso bought, styled, photographed and shipped every product and responded to every last Myspace comment from her aunts cottage. Today she is CEO of a global company with over 300 employees at two gargantuan premises in the US. Nasty Gal is the
500%
fastest growing ecommerce
Growth every year since its inception
it has over taken over ASOS AND ETSY to become the
site
in the us.
largest retail startup in terms of volume.
Amoruso is an e-tail pioneer using social platforms to communicate with her conusmers before it became a widely used marketing tool
93%
of inventory is sold at full price
Over
$100
million of clothing and accessories sold
received over
$50 million
in funding last year from Index Ventures
profitably
every year since 2011
550, 000 daly visits to the eccomerce site.
6 million visitors each
month with top 10% returning
100 times a month.
Named after song and album of the same name by funk singer Betty Davis, wife of Jazz muscian Miles Davis
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The Gal Behind Nasty...
Back in 2006 a 22 year old Sophia Amoruso was a community college dropout. Earning $13 an hour checking student IDs at an art school whilst living in her step-aunts cottage; not even Amoruso herself could have day dreamed the empire she has built in just 8 years. Amoruso’s story begins when she quit her job and set up an eBay page selling curated vintage pieces. She bought, styled, photographed and shipped every item herself and so the eBay page was a reflection of her personal style. Named on a whim one day after Funk Singer Betty Davis’ 1975 album – ‘Nasty Gal’ the brand began to build an identity and an online presence. Amoruso turned to Myspace, where she spent nights in front of her laptop hacking applications that could add her ‘friends’ with the click of a button. She used Myspace pages of brand’s like Nylon who she felt reached out to the same girls that Nasty Gal was aimed at. By adding ‘friends’ from Nylon and alike brands, the Nasty Gal page quickly accumulated 60,000 friends. Myspace allowed Amoruso to communicate with her consumers directly, an attribute which still applies to the brand today. She asked them about their style, taste and hobbies –she took every last comment on board and used it to inform all of future actions. At this early stage Amoruso had a simple business strategy – sell stuff at a higher price than what you bought it for. She scoured the internet for designer pieces being sold at a low price. She believed that a seller that didn’t know the correct spelling of a designer probably didn’t know its value either and so she would enter misspellings of YSL into her search engine to find the real deal at a fraction of the price. Nights camping outside Salvation Army to be the first to shop the latest deliveries paid off when Amoruso found an authentic Chanel jacket for $8. She styled it up in her Nasty Gal way and sold it for $1,000. At this stage, Nasty Gal was selling around 25 items per week and Amoruso quickly outgrew the space in her step-aunt’s cottage. In 2007, Amoruso acquired a 1,700 sq. ft. studio in Berkeley, California. Yet within 8 months, demand was growing at such a fast pace she needed more and so moved again to a 7,500 sq. ft. warehouse in Emeryville. By now it was evident that Nasty Gal had outgrown eBay and Amoruso was keen to provide her loyal customers with a website. Calling in a favour from a friend, ‘shopnastygal.com’ was created – at the time Nastygal.com was a pornography site… Amoruso taught herself how to use Photoshop and asked friends to model her clothes. She used models who ‘looked like nice people’ and paid them in burgers and shakes from the local diner. If an outfit wasn’t selling she would put it on a different model. It was important to Amoruso that the girls modelling the clothing were approachable and relatable ‘cool but not too pretty’ and this is another very identifiable element of the brand today; the models and styling push the boundaries, keeping Nasty Gal in a field of their own.
Myspace started to die a slow and painful death and Amoruso lead the leap to Facebook at the right time. Here, she would challenge fans to come up with names for new products, offering gift cards for the winners – pioneering a revolutionary way of online marketing without even realising she was doing so. Amoruso denies creating this ‘new generation of consumer’ and explains she was simply one of them and communicated with her fans in the only way she knew how. It was also free. As Nasty Gal grew Amoruso could no longer sail the ship alone and set out to find her first employee with an advert on Craig’s List. The first girl to reply was Christina Ferrucci. Amoruso thought she was ‘cool’ and the pair became good friends buying and sourcing products together daily. Today, Ferrucci is Buying Director of Nasty Gal. In 2014, Nasty Gal, now Nastygal.com is the fastest growing e-tailer in the United States with 500% growth every year since its inception. Amoruso is now boss to 300 mesh clad -ripped jeaned - berry lipped employees who live and breathe the Nasty Gal ethos. However, the story doesn’t end there. Nasty Gal is now beginning its mission of world domination, taking a huge dive across the pond to bring a bit of Nasty to the UK. The launch of her book, ‘Girl Boss’ which gives advice on starting a business, confirms that Amoruso is an entrepreneurial phenomenon of our generation. Now 30, Amoruso has never been in debt and recently bought a Porsche outright with cash while she continues the design and build of her dream house. Her proudest moment? At 18, she tattooed her arm with the Virgin Records logo and last year she was able to show Richard Branson as she met with him face to face. It doesn’t get much more Nasty Gal than that.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 1st May 2014 // London UK Gets NASTY! American e-tailer for fashion forward, free thinking girls ‘Nasty Gal’ makes the leap across the pond with a UK based distribution centre. Founded in 2006 by Sophia Amoruso, Nasty Gal has grown from strength to strength with 500% growth year on year since its inception. The online e-tailer ships worldwide but UK fans are faced with expensive shipping costs, delayed delivery and unexpected customs charges making the usually affordable, trend lead pieces a little less attractive and lot more expensive. However, UK Nasty Gal’s need not despair anymore (well 30 days more…) as the ultimate style destination is making its way over to the UK with a distribution centre in Warrington, Cheshire. Launching on 1st June 2014, the opening of the centre will allow shoppers to opt for a range of delivery options including Next Day for the standard delivery prices from delivery server DPD, used by ASOS. So we can all get in on a piece of the Nasty action secure in the knowledge our mesh and leather cut-out body con isn’t lost in transit somewhere over the Atlantic. The e-tailer will be launching with its 2nd line for its in house label – Nasty Gal Collection which is an eye watering assortment of skimpy body suits, mesh inserts, leather, bum bags and holographic metallics modelled in true Nasty Gal style by the kind of girls our mothers didn’t like us hanging round with. Emulating that cool festival style – we are talking Croatia, Serbia, and Barcelona not Leeds or V fest – the collection is designed for trend setting girls who have bodies to die for and heaps of partying stamina. Named after funk singer Better Davis, wife of Jazz musician Miles Davis, 1975 Album, Nasty Gal isn’t for the faint hearted and in the words of its founder Sophia Amoruso, ‘if the name shocks you, you probably aren’t our customer anyway’. Amoruso who has grown her empire in a short 8 years feels it is the right time to make the leap across the pond. “It’s a really exciting, yet stable time for Nasty Gal, I have an awesome team around me and we have just secured funding from Index Ventures. After months of meeting with a lot of investors we didn’t like, I met Danny Rimer and he really understood our brand image and what we are about and we said ‘let’s do this!’” Amoruso went on to explain why she feels the UK is a suitable place to expand: “I think our brand is very translatable globally as it’s very much based on ‘cool girls’ and you definitely have a lot of cool girls in the UK! We are really excited to grow our community in a market filled with positive competition, if ASOS can achieve their global success from the UK then we’d be stupid not to try right?” Nasty Gal goes live at www.nastygal.co.uk on 1st June 2014. For further information, images or sample requests please contact: Emma Nelson, Press Assistant Tel: 0110-547-9482 Email: emmanelson@nastygaluk.com
-ENDS-
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 5th May 2014 // London
R U Nasty? Nasty Gal challenges UK consumers with first stage of its campaign ‘R U Nasty?’ in lead up to its UK launch. American e-tailer Nasty Gal have begun the early stages of its first UK launch ahead of the opening of its Warrington based distribution centre and they have certainly stayed true to their name in a series of provocative, tongue-in-cheek print adverts. The adverts, featuring 2 scantily clad, long-limbed girls are being rolled out throughout stations on the London Underground as well as in various publications. With a subtle nod to the brand’s American heritage the images are set in an American style diner with the models indulging in junk food and feeding each other melting ice cream. Dressed in either a cut out bondage style swimsuit, mesh top or a pastel coloured bodysuit with strategically placed sweet treat graphics the images are provocative but in that cool, girls-just-wanna-have fun way with just enough controversy to make an impact. A series of text based adverts will feature alongside, with the bold and challenging question ‘R U Nasty?’ with the hash tag ‘#imnasty’ encouraging consumers to get involved via social media. The larger campaign is set to use social media sites Facebook and Instagram heavily, with Amoruso, founder of Nasty Gal believing that’s where her consumers are: “I have only ever known to communicate with my consumers via social media, it’s how the brand started out and for a very long time we haven’t branched out to any advertising but I feel like in order to fully reach out to our new UK consumers we needed to show them images and be like ‘hey this is who we are if you like what you see then come follow us’. A lot of our consumers lives are played out on these sites and we want our brand to be a part of both their on and offline worlds”. A competition is being launched on 7th May across Facebook and Instagram inviting consumers to share their own images of them ‘doing cool stuff’ using the branded hash-tag ‘#imnasty’ for a chance to win themselves an invite to the brand’s launch party on 22nd May. Consumers are also encouraged to share stations they have spotted the Nasty Gal ads at on their travels and the brand hopes to cover all stations by the launch date. The competition will close on 19th May 2014 and 15 winners will be chosen and announced via the brand’s Instagram and Facebook pages. Nasty Gal goes live at www.nastygal.co.uk on 1st June. For further information, images or sample requests please contact: Emma Nelson, Press Assistant Tel: 0110-547-9482 Email: emmanelson@nastygaluk.com
-ENDS-
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 23rd May 2014 // London
Last Night Things Got a Little NASTY! Last night the latest American e-tailer to cross the Atlantic took over the penthouse at All Star Lanes in Shoreditch to throw the ultimate Nasty party. Last night saw an assembly of topknots and crop tops gathering outside All Star Lanes on Brick Lane, Shoreditch for the hotly anticipated party to celebrate Nasty Gal’s UK website launch. The venue was the perfect backdrop to a night filled with entertainment and inspiration in a penthouse style private room that felt a far cry away from rainy London. The slick and stylish venue, set on a mezzanine above the main hall was all American themed complete with a New York skyline feature wall, 3 bowling alleys, pool tables and a sleek cocktail bar. Nasty Gal’s signature style was stamped on everything in the room. From the mini burgers and other endless supplies of American classics to the fusion of underground, electronica and house music from up and coming Radio One DJ Heidi. Heidi was dressed head to toe in the new Nasty Gal Collection, looking every inch the part in a metallic sliver swing cami dress and black bum bag. Photo booths that linked images to social media sites provided lots of entertainment as did the bowling and pool yet the highlight of the night was the ever stylish Sophia Amoruso, founder and ultimate Nasty Queen. Amoruso gave a 40 minute captivating, witty speech about her journey from eBay store to global online e-tailer. Amoruso exudes this effortless coolness that echoes through the brand. Buying Director, first ever employee and BFF Christina Ferrucci also entertained the audience with a speech about her role in the Nasty Gal journey and talked guests through the new Nasty Gal Collection. Caroline Nodder, Editor in Chief at Drapers magazine commented: “Amoruso is a vision. I could have listened to her story all day. What an inspiration for young women wanting to start out in fashion. She’s living proof that a strong, independent mind will take you very far in life. Oh and a good red lipstick of course!” Sophia Lopez of Mixmag music Magazine added: “What a night! Heidi killed it up there! Nasty Gal is the embodiment of a brand that seamlessly ties music and fashion, the whole collection just fits that underground vibe that is taking over events this summer. It just works.” Amelia Walsh, competition winner enthused about her night: “I absolutely love Nasty Gal but could never bring myself to pay the shipping costs from the US I can’t wait for it to be so accessible to me. Tonight was so much fun it was like stepping into a Nasty Gal look book and having a play around. They really captured the essence of the brand.” -M/F-
The Nasty Gal Collection was available to exclusively shop and a free iPhone case was given out with every transaction complete with the branded hash-tag ‘#imnasty’ which led the brand’s latest social media competition. Fans of the brand are encouraged to create their best festival look, snap a ‘selfie’ and share on Instagram to be in with a chance of winning tickets to Heidi’s sets at 1 of 4 European locations during June and July. Competition winners will be announced on 1st June. Nasty Gal’s UK site launches on 1st June, 2014 at www.nastygal.co.uk For further information, images or samples please contact: Emma Nelson, Press Assistant Tel: 0110-547-9482 Email: emmanelson@nastygaluk.com
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2nd June 2014 // London
Nasty does Europe! American e-tailer Nasty Gal takes its UK invasion to Europe. Nasty Gal continues its 1st UK campaign after its UK website went live yesterday. The final leg of the ‘R U Nasty?’ campaign sees the brand attending music events across Europe. Starting with Sonar Festival in Barcelona on 12th June. The brand is sponsoring a series of events from Exit Festival in Serbia to Hideout in Croatia. Representatives of Nasty Gal will be sporting an array of ensembles from the latest Nasty Gal Collection and giving out branded water bottles and hand fans at pool sides of the summers most talked about events. To receive a water bottle or hand fan, party goers simply need to share their email addresses. The best dressed girls will be scouted by the Nasty Gal photographers and if photographed with the branded fans will receive a 15% discount code to use online. Nasty Gal will be official sponsors of 7 events across Europe as well as having a presence there on the following dates: Sonar (Barcelona) 12th-16th June Awakenings (Amsterdam) 28th – 29th June Hideout (Croatia) 2nd – 4th July Exit (Serbia) 10th – 13th July Ushuaia (Ibiza) 15th – 30th July Music On (Ibiza) 15th – 30th July Will Lynch, associate editor for online music magazine and ticket sales site ‘Resident Advisor’ feels that Nasty Gal is an ideal sponsor for these events: “Nasty Gal’s collection is what every techno loving, Ibiza partying, 20 something girl wants. Nasty Gal’s presence at these events are great for both the brand and the festival goers, it’s important that fashion and music continue to exist together. The branded fans are an ideal way to target consumers, if you have ever been to one of these events you will know it’s a sea of girls waving around these fans. It’s going to be a great summer for Nasty Gal.” Nasty Gal is now available to shop in the UK at www.nastygal.co.uk and the brand will be reporting on their Europe tour via the brand’s Facebook and Instagram pages. -ENDSFor further information, images or sample requests please contact: Emma Nelson, Press Assistant Tel: 0110-547-9482 Email: emmanelson@nastygaluk.com
Media List... Nylon
Publication
WWD Harper’s Bazaar
Glamour
Cosmopolitan
Dazed and Confused
Telegraph Magazine Financial Times Guardian
Metro Vogue
Elle Wonderland Observer Magazine i-D
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