撿破爛女孩奮鬥出的時裝零售帝國大綱

'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.'

在線時裝零售帝國Nasty Gal的29歲老闆索菲婭?阿莫魯索(Sophia Amoruso)說：“我是資本家，我是CEO，我開有一家大公司，我是僱主。但這一切都沒有過程更重要，因爲我感覺自己可以心想事成。”僅用七年時間，阿莫魯索就把Nasty Gal從一家eBay上的舊衣網店打造成一家價值2.4億美元（約合人民幣14.7億元）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.

阿莫魯索坐在紐約克羅斯比街酒店(Crosby Street Hotel)的後花園裏，身穿一件針織蕾絲裙，肩上披着一件風衣，回味着她從17歲到22歲間的那段人生。17歲時，她離開薩克拉門託(Sacramento)的老家，一邊撿破爛、給唱片店打工、支持無政府主義，一邊在西海岸晃盪。22歲時，她創辦了“Nasty Gal”（髒女孩）公司。公司名字取自放克樂藝人、邁爾斯?戴維斯(Miles Davis)第二任妻子貝蒂?戴維斯(Betty Davis)的同名歌曲。現在常駐洛杉磯的阿莫魯索說：“我已經接受了自己所擁有的一切，而且感覺完全是按照我自己的想法來做的。”

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?

阿莫魯索創辦的是快速時尚這個高利潤行業裏一家規模可觀的小衆化公司。她的公司出售前衛、復古的衣裝，價格適中，上衣50美元（約合人民幣307元）一件，連衣裙70美元（約合人民幣429元）一件，另外公司還出售一些真正有年頭的衣服。客戶羣體是一羣越來越忠實、幾乎不斷與社交媒體互動的年輕女性。（批評者或許會說下襬太高、領口太低。）在不打廣告、很少有折扣的情況下，Nasty Gal依然經歷了急劇增長。這家公司以及阿莫魯索本人的成功很難被特徵化，這使得它的成長過程更加讓人着迷。那麼Nasty Gal究竟是什麼呢？

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，阿莫魯索剛剛從攝影學校退學，她以自己對陳年衣服的熱愛創辦了一家小公司，在前男友舊金山公寓的臥室裏用一臺Mac筆記本電腦運營。她倒賣eBay上淘到的重要物件，並通過Nasty Gal的Myspace頁面推廣。阿莫魯索利用模板加上自己的風格設計製作了公司的Myspace頁面，整個視覺效果完全不同於那種假人模特身穿一件舊搖滾T恤的劣質照片――eBay上的大多數圖片廣告都屬於這種。她在宗教慈善組織“救世軍”(Salvation Army)買到一件8美元（約合人民幣49元）的香奈兒(Chanel)皮上衣，轉手一賣就賣出了1,000美元（約合人民幣6,130元）以上。這樣的利潤率加上她的慧眼形成了這個紅紅火火的作坊式企業。

'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.'

她說：“剛開始時，我基本上只能請模特吃漢堡包。她們都是Myspace上的普通高中女生。我會請她們吃午飯，一天可能會給她們20美元（約合人民幣123元）。”在Nasty Gal不斷擴張的過程中，聘用平易近人的模特這一點一直沒有改變。“我們很酷，但也很包容，這點我覺得在時裝界就沒那麼常見了。”

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 ( 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.

最終，由於六萬個Myspace友鄰的需求越來越大，阿莫魯索淘到的陳年衣服和她的eBay店已經供不應求，於是她買下了網站（當時還是一個色情網站，她把域名買了下來），開始邀請MinkPink和Jeffrey Campbell等有着性感衝擊力的大品牌參加。

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年時，私募和風投已經在猛敲阿莫魯索的房門，而她只是很勉強地接待了他們。她說：“我不揹債就建立了一家利潤豐厚的大公司。我把這家公司賺到的每一丁點利潤又投入回去，這正是它成功的原因。”

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，阿莫魯索終於需要有人來幫忙做擴張了，於是她從Index Ventures公司的丹尼?裏默爾(Danny Rimer)――Asos、Net-A-Porter和Farfetch成功故事背後的早期投資者――那裏拿了5,000萬美元（約合人民幣3億元），在肯塔基州租了一個50萬平方英尺（約合4.6萬平方米）的配送中心。和Nasty Gal的大多數新嘗試一樣，與裏默爾合作的決定也是出自阿莫魯索的本性。“這裏面幾乎沒什麼惟利是圖的關係，丹尼這個人是我真正喜歡的，他跟我是朋友，像家人一樣。”她說：“當裏默爾與前述幾家公司接觸的時候，還沒人打算投資Net-A-Porter，也沒人投資Asos。Index公司的思維是一種反向思維，我也是這樣。”

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保持豐厚利潤率的一個竅門在於它的推廣方法。它直到最近纔開始打廣告。公司存貨很少，甚至沒有存貨，它向那些焦急等待Facebook更新的客戶們提供小批量產品――在一個依靠打折生存的行業裏，這是非常少見的（不過後來Nasty Gal網站上也推出了打折活動）。公司的Facebook粉絲數量已經增至831,055人，是2011年的10倍，Instagram上的粉絲比這還多。阿莫魯索說：“Nasty Gal其實是在對話中產生的。我閱讀每一條最新留言，在這上面花的時間估計比其他任何品牌都多。利用你在網上能夠利用的途徑聽別人說話，是非常有用的。我覺得別的公司纔剛剛開始明白這一點。”

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.'

裏默爾也是這麼認爲的。他說：“吸引我們去找Nasty Gal的，是索菲婭創造了某種極其特殊的東西，其特殊之處就在於她所做的事情與她的客戶羣體之間的某種關聯。”

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廣告公司 25歲的製作人沙倫?朗洛茨(Sharon Langlotz)在找一件“Cheap Monday”（瑞典服裝品牌“廉價星期一”）裙子的時候發現了Nasty Gal。她說：“我先是在Pinterest上面看到了它，然後順藤摸瓜找到了Nasty Gal網站。”在這個網站上，她被那些“不是很貴”、讓她想起街拍時尚博客上那些時髦着裝的“潮流”衣服吸引住了。現在她在Instagram、Pinterest和Facebook上都關注了Nasty Gal，並且一個星期兩次登陸Nasty Gal網站簽到。她說：“我裝滿了購物車，然後開始做夢。”她還說，Nasty Gal改變了她對網上購物的看法。

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.'

但如果衣服本身賣不動，社交媒體部分就會一文不值。Marvin Traub Associates是一家爲頂級時裝品牌做業務開拓的公司，其CEO莫蒂默?辛格(Mortimer Singer)說：“這是‘高低混搭’現象的體現，也就是女士穿着香奈兒的裙子，裏面再穿一件香蕉共和國(Banana Republic)的T恤――這種穿法我以前從未見過。”她說：“穿戴些復古裝束，可以讓她們走在時尚前列，因爲穿陳年服飾本身就很奢侈；而另一面，這樣穿又是對市場流行的一種反動。魚與熊掌就能兼得――這就是高明之處。”

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.

阿莫魯索又在做新的嘗試了：自主設計。本季將有Nasty Gal設計的第三個系列推出。阿莫魯索說：“設計是我們順水推舟的下一步。七年來我一直是在向同一個了不起的女孩賣衣服，隨着時間的推移，我們理解了她所喜歡的輪廓與剪裁。”爲給自主品牌開路，她從Asos挖來莎拉?威爾金森(Sarah Wilkinson)當設計副總裁，又聘請曾爲Nicholas Kirkwood和Peter Pilotto效力的勞倫?麥卡爾蒙特(Lauren McCalmont)當平面設計師。她把自己的大多數精力都限定在對概念的定奪上。“我會來批准，或者會跟他們說，需要設計得更性感些。”目前Nasty Gal的自主品牌服裝佔其銷售額的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聲稱自主品牌的銷售額接近1.3億美元（約合人民幣8億元），超過兩年之前的四倍。不過現在該公司說這些數字只是猜測。這樣的成功，很大程度上歸功於客戶的深度參與：5.5萬名顧客平均每天要花六分鐘的時間在其網站上找東西。Nasty Gal聲稱，前10%的用戶一個月登陸網站的次數超過100次，而半數銷售額都來自前20%的顧客。“Nasty Gal女孩”或許不會忠於任何唯一的品牌，但她們肯定忠於Nasty Gal。接下來，該公司要在洛杉磯建設6.5萬平方英尺（約合6萬平方米）的辦公場所。

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.'

阿莫魯索的個人生活也在不斷取得進展。她正在同一個男人交往，兩人相識於“我還是西雅圖一個邋邋遢遢、髒兮兮、小小的無政府主義拾荒者”的時候。另外她還在推銷一本“從局外人角度看商界”的書。（她打算將其中一章的標題寫爲“說唱之夢成爲現實”。）雖然阿莫魯索仍保留着她當年的獨立與態度，但其個人審美還是在向上流靠攏。她正在改造新買的住宅，前不久她還買了一輛保時捷，不過在買車的時候，她才發現自己以前的人生造成了一個小小的絆腳石：經銷商不給她提供貸款。（其實之前她連信用卡都很難辦下來，直到最近纔有所改善。）她說：“我都肯付五成首付了，他們就是不肯讓我貸另外一半。我不得不付全款。”