Not that I've heard of this company before (I guess it's news because of the sex of the founder), but wouldn't they have survived hadn't they taken VC money? I don't understand this "we must grow or die scenarios".
Yeh, but going for the large growth and taking huge amount of vc money is very risky since if the growth you dream of never come that vc money is a ticking bomb.
Retail clothing sales is well trodden ground. No one is inovating, everyone who survives just executes better than the other guy.
Most of the startups I hear about aren't doing that either. The vast majority are slight variations on a theme where most of the supposed novelty is in the marketing — just like Nasty Gal.
They'll happily take my measurements, and let me call in for recommendations.
I do suppose the idea of giving personalized recommendations to lower spending groups might work though I bet that department stores do the same thing. I know that women's fashion websites tailor their experience to users already.
- Only high end stores do personal styling/personal shopping, whereas we have a range that suits all budgets.
- Styling in-store has a much more limited range, we have ~1500 brands.
- Going into a store, or chatting on the phone, is much less accessible than browsing a website (although obviously a trade-off on being able to try on the clothes right there, but we do free returns).
Is there any time limit on purchases? I'm not paid for a week, I wouldn't want to go through that signup process and have it disappear for whatever reason.
In my experience, most large fashion sites can comfortably run on a Magento instance with a fairly simple architecture, normally a small handful of load balanced PHP instances, with a dual read slave / master database configuration.
Fashion itself, however, is a much different beast, being cool, hip, whatever, it takes a lot of skill - to really understand your target market and sell them something they don't even know they want yet.
Source: I'm a software engineer who has previously worked for www.missguided.co.uk, www.jdsports.co.uk, www.boohoo.com and currently works for www.countryattire.co.uk
Nothing new, investors threw money at a bad idea, business failed.
So, how about lunch?
You're suggesting it's some kind of feminism promotion piece?
Any company with over $50MM in funding will get press. I might buy the idea that part of it relates to her being a high profile founder, but none of this relates to gender.
No I'm suggesting it gets covered because of a female founder. A lot of companies in that size go broke all the time without being covered. Maybe it hasn't anything to do with her gender but I can't help to think it has since the news otherwise is incredibly boring.
Also, the female founder is an author who heavily markets her book on business techniques and has publishers who are dedicated to calling newspapers and getting her name in them.
All press is good press after all.
Startup bankruptcies are a very common topic and Nasty Gal isn't any different. To suggest that it's news just because of the founder's gender is ridiculous and trivializes the hard work and emotional roller coaster everybody involved went through.
Just like half the time I have never heard of the fintech startups that get thrown around here, because I am not part of the fintech news demographic.
It also probably didn't come up here because it isn't a tech startup.
However it is now a very interesting investment failure story, and that is something HN is interested in.
But for me, as a total outsider, this has 0 news worth since from my understanding the company has no real public interest except for their customers and founders/owners. AFAIK the company isn't even public so it isn't like anyone has anything invested in it.
It is for me obvious that the company bankruptcy is covered because of the gender of the founder. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't really see any other reason to why.
It's also useful, as a man, to have a basic understanding of the fashion industry as part of being an educated human being. You can tell a lot about a woman by how she dresses herself. Especially her shoes. :)
Maybe not that popular if they're going bankrupt?
The reason fashion is a tough nut to crack is the short business cycle and associated inventory risk. You need to anticipate fashion trends, get product to market quickly, and if you screw up you have to dump your inventory at clearance sale prices and eat that loss. Big retailers are experts at finding ways to manage that risk, and that's why the Forever 21's of the world sell crap clothing made overseas.
Seriously, when Britney Spears popularized low-rise jeans, every teenage female in the USA had to go to the mall and change out her wardrobe. When Clark Gable appeared in a movie wearing a men's dress shirt with no undershirt, the market for men's undershirts tanked.
How does one plan for that sort of thing within the constraints of a VC-backed company?
Edit: it's a serious question, not a rhetorically charged one. Small companies go bankrupt all the time.