Image: WENN
Shocking but not entirely surprising news coming from Nasty Gal today as founder Sophia Amoruso announced she will be stepping down as CEO of her brand, which she has led for eight years. She posted a video message to the Nasty Gal blog talking about the change.
She’s chosen Nasty Gal President Sheree Waterson to take on the vacated role. “I’ve spent a long time, probably the last couple years thinking constantly whether this is the job that I want or the job that I’m best at,” she said in the video. “I found myself really just wanting to extend our brand, which means sometimes being out of the office. But it would really shortchange Nasty Gal not being out there with our customers.”
Calling Sheree an “extremely inspiring woman,” Sophia says she will oversee brand marketing and creative, that she is “setting myself up to mentor our incredible customer and to evolve our customer vision, voice, and experience while at the same time setting Sheree up to mentor our team (and sometimes me), and to lead our business, as Nasty Gal’s new CEO.”
The Cut notes that Nasty Gal has not been doing too well in the past year, having cut about 10 percent of its staff. Soon after the grim reaping, former employees took to Glassdoor to slam Amoruso and the brand’s leadership team, citing “awful management” and mentioning that Amoruso seemed “busy working on other ventures – which is great in press for the company – but she should be focusing more on the numbers of the business and why they’re having random layoffs…. it’s as if she is on cruise control and letting them do the heavy lifting while she offers direction.”
We guess we can call this a new chapter in Sophia’s #GirlBoss book.
