Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

by Sean Ellis

Sophia Amoruso, the founder of Nasty Gal, a women’s fashion brand that soared to popularity among millennials in its early years, recounts how learning what language resonated with her target customer was crucial not just for bringing in new business, but for the development of her brand’s whole identity. When she started her business by selling secondhand clothes on eBay, she would spend hours scouring the Web for the most enticing descriptions of similar items. To get ideas, she researched popular search terms to learn about current trends, which she then used for inspiration in defining her brand. As New York magazine reporter Molly Young recounted in a story about Amoruso’s success, “[B]atwing, lamé, and lumberjack were big in 2007; studded and architectural and origami in 2008”; with this knowledge she scoured rag houses, with their stockpiles of secondhand clothes, to resell on eBay. She crafted a unique, always on-trend brand that resonated with millennial fashionistas.11 Amoruso recalls in her book #GIRLBOSS that “[e]ach week I grew faster, smarter, and more aware of what women wanted.”