Introduction:

Hello everyone, welcome to my video. This is a presentation for my

Management Information System course. I will talk about a case study: A
Nasty Ending For Nasty Gal in this video, I hope you guys enjoy it.

In the content, I will separate this video into 3 parts, the first one is the
summary, the second one is the question for the case study, and the last one is
the conclusion.

In the summary, I will have a short introduction about Nasty Gal and its
foundation for you to have a basic view about it. Then we will get understand
more about the case and Nasty Gal through the Timeline.

So, let it begins!

Nasty Gal is an American retailer that specializes in fashion for young women.
The company has customers in over 60 countries. Founded by Sophia Amoruso
in 2006, Nasty Gal was named “Fastest Growing Retailer” in 2012 by INC
Magazine. Nasty Gal is based in Los Angeles. In 2017, the company was
purchased by the BooHoo Group

Timeline:

In the timeline, there are 5 important milestone that can be called by the history
of Nasty Gal.

In 2006, while working as a campus safety host at Academy of Art University,

Amoruso launched an eBay store based in San Francisco, selling old pieces of
clothing. The store was named Nasty Gal Vintage, the name being inspired by
Betty Davis. The eBay store sold vintage fashion that Amoruso sourced from
secondhand stores.

MySpace was the primary form of communication for the store in its early
days. In June 2008, Amoruso moved Nasty Gal Vintage off eBay and onto its
own destination site. In 2009, Nasty Gal moved into its first warehouse space
in Berkeley, California, and soon after to a 7,500-square-foot warehouse in
Emeryville, California. Amoruso has emphasized in interviews the importance
of social media to Nasty Gal’s growth.

In 2010, Nasty Gal moved its headquarters to Los Angeles, California. The
company received $9 million in investments in early 2012, followed by $40
million in August 2012 from venture capital firm Index Ventures.

By 2012, the online retailer employed approximately 110 people and had
opened an additional distribution center in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, while its
2011 revenue reached $24 million, marking an 11,200% three-year growth rate.
In 2014, Nasty Gal opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Los Angeles at
8115 Melrose Avenue. The store had Nasty Gal footwear, apparel, accessories,
and intimates.

On January 12, 2015, Amoruso announced that Sheree Waterson would take
over as CEO of Nasty Gal. Waterson, formerly president of Nasty Gal, became
partners with Amoruso to evolve its retail presence on a larger scale. Amoruso
continued as founder and executive chairman. Waterson also joined the Nasty
Gal board of directors alongside Amoruso and Index Ventures partner, Danny
Rimer.

In March 2015, a second brick-and-mortar store opened in Santa Monica.

In 2016, Nasty Gal filed for bankruptcy. The British-owned BooHoo Group
announced in February 2017 that they had purchased Nasty Gal.

In the case study, Sophia Amoruso’s business model for Nasty Gal Vintage
was centered around social media. In a short period of time, Sophia was able to
attract nearly six thousand followers on the platform MySpace, and from there
she was able to gradually expand to other social media platforms as the
business grew. Since her target market was large enough, Sophia took her
business to eBay to attract an even more diverse set of buyers. Further, she
utilized the opportunity and created her own website to sell her products on.
One of the main reasons she was able to attract such a broad audience was due
to her creative marketing strategies – she used quotes and uniquely angled
pictures to grab the consumers attention. She was also very considerate of
customer feedback further contributing to the social aspect of her business. If in
other companies’ customer feedback could take months to get to the CEO, at
Nasty Gal the customer always was at the center of attention and conversation

QUESTION

Now, we will move to the part 2: question. In this part, I will answer the
questions of the case study, after getting clear about Nasty Gal by the case.

How was social media related to Nasty Gal’s business model? To what
extent was Nasty Gal a “social” business?

I assume that since her vision emerged as an online retailer, social media was
linked to Nasty Gal's business model. Sophia Amoruso launched her company
by selling antique goods that she would buy and sell on eBay, where she began
to draw interest from a particular target of customers who liked what she was
selling. Her commitment and thorough orientation to her eBay shop and her
way of photographing each piece made her have a rapid growth that set her
apart from other retailers. Eventually, when she saw that she was able to
expand, that led to her getting a large amount of income inspiring her to grow
her business and area of distribution. She took her company from Myspace to
eBay and finally, which was a big change, to her individual website. Opening
her social media channel with millions of followers, such as Snapchat, Twitter,
Facebook, helped her meet her target buyers. The degree to which Nasty Gal
was a social media company was where all social media development was
required to meet her potential buyers so they could come and purchase her
website.

What management, organization, and technology problems were

responsible for Nasty Gal’s failure as a business?

Nasty Gal as an organization wanted to grow too quickly and rapidly. The
expansion was fueled by heavy spending in both marketing and advertising.
This is a strategy used by start-ups mostly, but this strategy is only rewarding
in the long run if one-time customers become loyal and frequent shoppers.
Nasty Gal spent way too much money on online marketing and influencers, and
once it had run through its fundraising capital and had to cut down on
marketing, the sales continued to drop. From people's perspective, there were
three stakeholders to consider – the employees, customers, and Sophia herself.
While it was growing, Nasty Gal was assembling its marketing team by hiring
sizzling junior talent who had previous experience in traditional retail
backgrounds. Their experience clashed with the start-up environment. Further,
some customers were dissatisfied with the product quality, while many were
simply more attracted to fast-fashion retailers who deliver a wider array of
trendy clothes, have brick and mortar stores, and are constantly changing their
merchandise. Lastly, Sophia was distracted with other projects in her life and
was known for her lack of focus. From a technological standpoint, Nasty Gal
was way too focused on the creative side and not paying enough attention to all
the other expenses that could have been optimized to perform better and more
efficiently handle their inventory, distribution, and logistics

Could Nasty Gal have avoided bankruptcy? Explain your answer.

In my points of view, Yes. Nasty Gal could have avoided bankruptcy if it had
not focused on excessive growth without having the merchandise and the
customers for it. While growth is important, maintaining liquidity and profit
matters more. E-commerce brands need to look at what real consumers want to
wear, not just the assumption of what fits their profile. While clothing is
individual, Nasty Gal’s clothing is not as wearable and versatile as their
competitors, such as ASOS or ZARA

Conclusion
In the conclusion, there are 3 main points I want to figure out in this study case.
1. According to the case study for the nasty gal it can be said that she got
popular on social media in a short amount of time, she got large fame in a short
period, these followers also help her to grow the business online. After that, she
created her Ebays Keller account and a website to promote her brand, sell
products online and earn money. Her main target was customers which she
used to post, and updating this platform made her reach better.

2. There were many reasons for the failure as coming to know from the case
study.
So the main reason was:
- Spending money on marketing and influencers too much that leads to more
loss
- Hiring juniors who are not much trained led to the collapse of the startup,
- The nasty girl was herself busy with other things that lacks focus in one place.
All these led to the collapse of the nasty girl's business and the main reason for
failure.

3. The bankruptcy could be avoided if the funds were used carefully as the
products were just a startup and she was comparing them to big brads like the
Zara, h&m
This lead to spending of much money on the merchandise of the clothes and
leading to the bankruptcy of the nasty girl and the collapse of the startup.

So, this is the end of the video, I hope that you enjoy it and have more points of
view about this case study. And if you like it, please gimme a like and a
comment for more effort in the future. Thank you!