捡破烂女孩奋斗出的时装零售帝国

'I'M A CAPITALIST, I'm a CEO, I run a big business, I'm an employer,' says Sophia Amoruso, the 29-year-old head of Nasty Gal, the online fashion retail empire that she transformed from an eBay vintage store into a $240 million company in just seven years. 'But it's all secondary to the way it happened, because I could be anything.'
在线时装零售帝国Nasty Gal的29岁老板索菲娅?阿莫鲁索(Sophia Amoruso)说：“我是资本家，我是CEO，我开有一家大公司，我是雇主。但这一切都没有过程更重要，因为我感觉自己可以心想事成。”仅用七年时间，阿莫鲁索就把Nasty Gal从一家eBay上的旧衣网店打造成一家价值2.4亿美元（约合人民币14.7亿元）的公司。

Sitting in the back garden of New York's Crosby Street Hotel dressed in a crocheted lace dress and a trench draped over her shoulders, Amoruso is reflecting on the period of her life between age 17-when she left home in Sacramento to dumpster dive, work in record stores and side with anarchism while she floated up and down the West Coast-and 22, when she started Nasty Gal. She named the company after the song by funk musician Betty Davis, the second wife of Miles Davis. 'I've accepted what I have, and I feel like I've completely done it on my own terms,' says Amoruso, who is now based in Los Angeles.
阿莫鲁索坐在纽约克罗斯比街酒店(Crosby Street Hotel)的后花园里，身穿一件针织蕾丝裙，肩上披着一件风衣，回味着她从17岁到22岁间的那段人生。17岁时，她离开萨克拉门托(Sacramento)的老家，一边捡破烂、给唱片店打工、支持无政府主义，一边在西海岸晃荡。22岁时，她创办了“Nasty Gal”（脏女孩）公司。公司名字取自放克乐艺人、迈尔斯?戴维斯(Miles Davis)第二任妻子贝蒂?戴维斯(Betty Davis)的同名歌曲。现在常驻洛杉矶的阿莫鲁索说：“我已经接受了自己所拥有的一切，而且感觉完全是按照我自己的想法来做的。”

What Amoruso has created is a sizeable niche business in the high-margin fast-fashion space. Her company sells edgy, retro-inspired looks at reasonable prices-$50 tops, $70 dresses-and some actual vintage items to a rabidly loyal customer base of young women, frothed up by almost constant social media interaction. (Detractors might say the hemlines are too high and necklines too low.) Nasty Gal has been experiencing a growth spurt, with no advertising and little discounting. That its successes-and Amoruso-are difficult to characterize has made its ascent all the more enthralling. So what is Nasty Gal, exactly?
阿莫鲁索创办的是快速时尚这个高利润行业里一家规模可观的小众化公司。她的公司出售前卫、复古的衣装，价格适中，上衣50美元（约合人民币307元）一件，连衣裙70美元（约合人民币429元）一件，另外公司还出售一些真正有年头的衣服。客户群体是一群越来越忠实、几乎不断与社交媒体互动的年轻女性。（批评者或许会说下摆太高、领口太低。）在不打广告、很少有折扣的情况下，Nasty Gal依然经历了急剧增长。这家公司以及阿莫鲁索本人的成功很难被特征化，这使得它的成长过程更加让人着迷。那么Nasty Gal究竟是什么呢？

It began humbly. In 2006, Amoruso had just dropped out of photography school. She turned her passion for vintage clothes into a small business, run from her Mac laptop in her bedroom of her ex-boyfriend's San Francisco apartment, reselling key finds on eBay and promoting them via Nasty Gal's Myspace page. The entire looks Amoruso constructed, using models and her own styling, were far from the bad photos of an old rock T-shirt on a mannequin that comprises the majority of visual presentation on eBay. She'd sell a Chanel leather jacket she bought for $8 at the Salvation Army for over $1,000. These margins, matched with her careful eye, made for a booming cottage business.
它出身寒微。2006年，阿莫鲁索刚刚从摄影学校退学，她以自己对陈年衣服的热爱创办了一家小公司，在前男友旧金山公寓的卧室里用一台Mac笔记本电脑运营。她倒卖eBay上淘到的重要物件，并通过Nasty Gal的Myspace页面推广。阿莫鲁索利用模板加上自己的风格设计制作了公司的Myspace页面，整个视觉效果完全不同于那种假人模特身穿一件旧摇滚T恤的劣质照片──eBay上的大多数图片广告都属于这种。她在宗教慈善组织“救世军”(Salvation Army)买到一件8美元（约合人民币49元）的香奈儿(Chanel)皮上衣，转手一卖就卖出了1,000美元（约合人民币6,130元）以上。这样的利润率加上她的慧眼形成了这个红红火火的作坊式企业。

'In the beginning, I was basically paying the models with hamburgers,' she says. 'They were normal high school girls that you find on Myspace. I would buy them lunch and maybe give them $20 a day.' Using approachable-looking models has persisted with Nasty Gal's growth. 'We're cool, but we're inclusive, which I think in fashion is not that common.'
她说：“刚开始时，我基本上只能请模特吃汉堡包。她们都是Myspace上的普通高中女生。我会请她们吃午饭，一天可能会给她们20美元（约合人民币123元）。”在Nasty Gal不断扩张的过程中，聘用平易近人的模特这一点一直没有改变。“我们很酷，但也很包容，这点我觉得在时装界就没那么常见了。”

Eventually, the demand from her 60,000 Myspace friends outgrew what she could supply with vintage finds and her eBay store. She bought the site nastygalvintage.com (nastygal.com was, at the time, a pornography site; she's since purchased the domain name) and began approaching labels with a provocative edge, like MinkPink and Jeffrey Campbell, to participate.
最终，由于六万个Myspace友邻的需求越来越大，阿莫鲁索淘到的陈年衣服和她的eBay店已经供不应求，于是她买下了网站nastygalvintage.com（当时nastygal.com还是一个色情网站，她把域名买了下来），开始邀请MinkPink和Jeffrey Campbell等有着性感冲击力的大品牌参加。

By 2010, equity firms and venture capitalists were banging down her door, but Amoruso barely entertained them. 'I built a huge profitable business with no debt,' she says. 'I put every drop of profit from this business back into it. That's why it's successful.'
到2010年时，私募和风投已经在猛敲阿莫鲁索的房门，而她只是很勉强地接待了他们。她说：“我不背债就建立了一家利润丰厚的大公司。我把这家公司赚到的每一丁点利润又投入回去，这正是它成功的原因。”

When she finally did need help expanding, in 2012, Amoruso took $50 million from Danny Rimer of Index Ventures-an early investor in success stories like Asos, Net-A-Porter and Farfetch-and leased a 500,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Kentucky. Like most of Nasty Gal's new endeavors, the decision to go with Rimer came from Amoruso's gut. 'I don't really have any mercenary relationships in the business, and Danny is someone I really like as a person, who I'm friends with, who is like family,' she says. 'No one was investing in Net-A-Porter, no one was investing in Asos [when Rimer approached them]. Index is contrarian in their thinking, which I am.'
2012年，阿莫鲁索终于需要有人来帮忙做扩张了，于是她从Index Ventures公司的丹尼?里默尔(Danny Rimer)──Asos、Net-A-Porter和Farfetch成功故事背后的早期投资者──那里拿了5,000万美元（约合人民币3亿元），在肯塔基州租了一个50万平方英尺（约合4.6万平方米）的配送中心。和Nasty Gal的大多数新尝试一样，与里默尔合作的决定也是出自阿莫鲁索的本性。“这里面几乎没什么惟利是图的关系，丹尼这个人是我真正喜欢的，他跟我是朋友，像家人一样。”她说：“当里默尔与前述几家公司接触的时候，还没人打算投资Net-A-Porter，也没人投资Asos。Index公司的思维是一种反向思维，我也是这样。”

One way Nasty Gal has kept margins thick is through its approach to promotion. Until recently it didn't advertise. The company has little to no overstock, thanks to the limited runs it offers to those customers eagerly awaiting Facebook updates-a rarity in a business that relies on discounting (though, more recently, discounting has been featured on the site). Since 2011, its number of Facebook fans has increased tenfold, to nearly 831,055. The company has even more Instagram followers. 'Nasty Gal really emerged from a conversation,' says Amoruso. 'I've probably spent more time than any other brand reading every last comment. To listen to people the way you're able to online is very powerful. I think other companies are just starting to figure that out.'
Nasty Gal保持丰厚利润率的一个窍门在于它的推广方法。它直到最近才开始打广告。公司存货很少，甚至没有存货，它向那些焦急等待Facebook更新的客户们提供小批量产品──在一个依靠打折生存的行业里，这是非常少见的（不过后来Nasty Gal网站上也推出了打折活动）。公司的Facebook粉丝数量已经增至831,055人，是2011年的10倍，Instagram上的粉丝比这还多。阿莫鲁索说：“Nasty Gal其实是在对话中产生的。我阅读每一条最新留言，在这上面花的时间估计比其他任何品牌都多。利用你在网上能够利用的途径听别人说话，是非常有用的。我觉得别的公司才刚刚开始明白这一点。”

Rimer agrees: 'What led us to Nasty Gal was the fact that Sophia had created something extremely special in terms of a connection between what she was doing and her customer base.'
里默尔也是这么认为的。他说：“吸引我们去找Nasty Gal的，是索菲娅创造了某种极其特殊的东西，其特殊之处就在于她所做的事情与她的客户群体之间的某种关联。”

Sharon Langlotz, a 25-year-old producer at the ad firm Anomaly, found Nasty Gal when she was looking for a Cheap Monday dress. 'I found it on Pinterest first,' she says. 'I tracked it to the Nasty Gal site,' where her eye was caught by the 'trendy' apparel that was 'not too pricey' and reminded her of the stylish clothing she sees on street-style fashion blogs. She now follows Nasty Gal on Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook, checking in with the site twice a week. 'I fill up my shopping cart and dream,' she says, adding that Nasty Gal has changed the way she views online shopping.
Anomaly广告公司 25岁的制作人沙伦?朗洛茨(Sharon Langlotz)在找一件“Cheap Monday”（瑞典服装品牌“廉价星期一”）裙子的时候发现了Nasty Gal。她说：“我先是在Pinterest上面看到了它，然后顺藤摸瓜找到了Nasty Gal网站。”在这个网站上，她被那些“不是很贵”、让她想起街拍时尚博客上那些时髦着装的“潮流”衣服吸引住了。现在她在Instagram、Pinterest和Facebook上都关注了Nasty Gal，并且一个星期两次登陆Nasty Gal网站签到。她说：“我装满了购物车，然后开始做梦。”她还说，Nasty Gal改变了她对网上购物的看法。

But the social media component would be nothing if the clothes themselves weren't selling. 'This is the embodiment of the high-low phenomena-women wearing a Chanel dress with the Banana Republic T-shirt underneath-in a way I've never seen before,' says Mortimer Singer, CEO of Marvin Traub Associates, which works in business development for top fashion brands. 'They can keep a fashion edge by having something vintage, which is luxury by nature and, on the flip side, have a reaction to what is happening in the marketplace. They can have their cake and eat it-that's the genius here.'
但如果衣服本身卖不动，社交媒体部分就会一文不值。Marvin Traub Associates是一家为顶级时装品牌做业务开拓的公司，其CEO莫蒂默?辛格(Mortimer Singer)说：“这是‘高低混搭’现象的体现，也就是女士穿着香奈儿的裙子，里面再穿一件香蕉共和国(Banana Republic)的T恤──这种穿法我以前从未见过。”她说：“穿戴些复古装束，可以让她们走在时尚前列，因为穿陈年服饰本身就很奢侈；而另一面，这样穿又是对市场流行的一种反动。鱼与熊掌就能兼得──这就是高明之处。”

Amoruso is attempting another move: in-house designs; this season will mark the third collection by Nasty Gal. 'Designing was the natural next step for us. It's going on seven years for me that I've been selling clothing to the same awesome girl. And we've understood the kind of silhouettes and cuts that she likes over time,' says Amoruso. To spearhead the in-house label, she poached her vice president of design, Sarah Wilkinson, from Asos and hired a print designer, Lauren McCalmont, who had worked for Nicholas Kirkwood and Peter Pilotto. She restricts the majority of her input to final say over concepts. 'I approve it or say it needs to be sexier.' Currently, the Nasty Gal label and collection comprise 30 percent of its sales.
阿莫鲁索又在做新的尝试了：自主设计。本季将有Nasty Gal设计的第三个系列推出。阿莫鲁索说：“设计是我们顺水推舟的下一步。七年来我一直是在向同一个了不起的女孩卖衣服，随着时间的推移，我们理解了她所喜欢的轮廓与剪裁。”为给自主品牌开路，她从Asos挖来莎拉?威尔金森(Sarah Wilkinson)当设计副总裁，又聘请曾为Nicholas Kirkwood和Peter Pilotto效力的劳伦?麦卡尔蒙特(Lauren McCalmont)当平面设计师。她把自己的大多数精力都限定在对概念的定夺上。“我会来批准，或者会跟他们说，需要设计得更性感些。”目前Nasty Gal的自主品牌服装占其销售额的30%。

In 2012, Nasty Gal claimed those sales hit almost $130 million, more than quadrupling revenue from two years before, though the company now calls those numbers speculative. Much of that success is owed to their customers' intense engagement: 550,000 shoppers check out the site for an average length of six minutes once a day. Nasty Gal claims that their top 10 percent of users look at the site more than 100 times a month. And yet half of its sales come from 20 percent of its customers. Nasty Gal girls might not be loyal to any one label, but they sure are loyal to Nasty Gal. Next up, the company is building 65,000 square feet of office space in Los Angeles.
2012年，Nasty Gal声称自主品牌的销售额接近1.3亿美元（约合人民币8亿元），超过两年之前的四倍。不过现在该公司说这些数字只是猜测。这样的成功，很大程度上归功于客户的深度参与：5.5万名顾客平均每天要花六分钟的时间在其网站上找东西。Nasty Gal声称，前10%的用户一个月登陆网站的次数超过100次，而半数销售额都来自前20%的顾客。“Nasty Gal女孩”或许不会忠于任何唯一的品牌，但她们肯定忠于Nasty Gal。接下来，该公司要在洛杉矶建设6.5万平方英尺（约合6万平方米）的办公场所。

In her personal life, Amoruso is making moves as well. She is dating a man she knew from when 'I was a scruffy, grimy, little anarchist dumpster diver in Seattle,' and pitching a book about 'the business world from an outsider's view.' (She plans to title one chapter 'Living the Rap Dream.') While she retains her independence and attitude from those days, her personal aesthetic has taken a upmarket turn. She is remodeling her new home and recently bought a Porsche, though when doing so, she found her former life creating a small stumbling block: The dealership would not offer her financing (until recently, she had trouble even getting credit cards). 'I was willing to put half down on a loan, and they wouldn't let me finance the other half,' she says. 'I had to pay cash.'
阿莫鲁索的个人生活也在不断取得进展。她正在同一个男人交往，两人相识于“我还是西雅图一个邋邋遢遢、脏兮兮、小小的无政府主义拾荒者”的时候。另外她还在推销一本“从局外人角度看商界”的书。（她打算将其中一章的标题写为“说唱之梦成为现实”。）虽然阿莫鲁索仍保留着她当年的独立与态度，但其个人审美还是在向上流靠拢。她正在改造新买的住宅，前不久她还买了一辆保时捷，不过在买车的时候，她才发现自己以前的人生造成了一个小小的绊脚石：经销商不给她提供贷款。（其实之前她连信用卡都很难办下来，直到最近才有所改善。）她说：“我都肯付五成首付了，他们就是不肯让我贷另外一半。我不得不付全款。”