On Monday, Sophia Amoruso, founder and CEO of the popular e-commerce site, Nasty Gal, announced to her staff that she is stepping down from the throne.
The CEO and bestselling author made her announcement in a video blog that was posted to the company’s website.
“Today is a big day at Nasty Gal,” the post reads. Over the course of the past year, it’s become evident that I am the brand connector—both to the world at large, to the influential individuals and organizations, and to our customers. And it’s also become resolutely clear that I and Nasty Gal are ready for a move I’ve been thinking about for going on two years now.”
The #GirlBoss author will be handing her title over to the current president of Nasty Gal, Sheree Waterson. According to an interview with Re/code, Amoruso believed that the job was meant for someone with more experience in day-to-day operations and Waterson fits that description. Waterson is the former Chief Product Officer of Lululemon; she was dismissed from that role back in 2013 after the company was forced to recall transparent yoga pants.
Amoruso, who started the business as side project on eBay, has been in charge of Nasty Gal for eight years now. Her departure comes as a shock seeing that she recently became a best-selling author after releasing her first book,, #GirlBoss, a memoir about how she went from being an unemployed and unresponsible twentysomething with no formal business training to the head of a multi-million dollar fashion empire.
“I was 22 and, like most 22-year-olds, I was looking for a way to pay my rent and buy my Starbucks chai,” she writes. “Had someone shown me the future of where Nasty Gal would be in 2014, I would have gasped in revulsion, thinking, ‘Oh, hell no, that is way too much work.'”
Although the book gave us a pretty impressive glimpse into Amoruso’s rise to the top (and how to be a boss), Nasty Gal has had a pretty rough year. The company laid of 10 percent of its staff this past summer after a slight decrease in sales, likely attributed to competition from other fashion giants such as Tobi.
While Amoruso will no longer be the head #GirlBoss, she will still help the company make important daily decisions.