RETAIL
Nasty Gal Shuttering Los Angeles Operations With Sale to BooHoo
Online clothing vendor Nasty Gal will be spending the next two to three months winding down its Los Angeles operations after British-based fashion online retailer BooHoo won a $20 million bid to buy the company’s intellectual-property assets, trademarks and customer lists.
BooHoo was the stalking-horse bidder, meaning it was the first company to bid to buy Nasty Gal, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November. A bankruptcy court auction for anyone who wanted to counter BooHoo’s bid was set for Feb. 7. However, no one else wanted to buy the company, leaving BooHoo the winner.
The transaction is scheduled to close on Feb. 28. Brand sales will continue under the ownership of BooHoo.
“I am enormously proud of the tremendous brand value we have built over the years at Nasty Gal and deeply grateful for the enduring contributions made to the brand by so many of our passionate employees and vendor partners,” said Nasty Gal Chief Executive Officer Sheree Waterson in a statement. Waterson came on board in 2015 after working as an executive at Lululemon.
Nasty Gal was founded in 2006 by a 22-year-old Sophia Amoruso and quickly rocketed to prominence as an online clothing site that was popular with 3.5 million followers. Later the company opened two stores in the Los Angeles area and moved to new headquarters encompassing 50,000 square feet in a historic Beaux-Arts style building in downtown Los Angeles. It also had a shipping and fulfillment center in Kentucky.
The company listed its most recent annual revenues as approaching $80 million—a big decline from previous annual revenues listed between $130 million and $300 million.
