spot for up-and-coming streetwear brands and a major cultural influencer.
He “was shooting for the stars,” said one former Karmaloop executive, hoping robust numbers would make the company look more attractive to outside investors.“We had a lot of debt on the books,” said Selkoe. “But again, the alternative is they foreclose and take the whole business anyway. So after our settlement we washed our hands of them. 20.2k Followers, 525 Following, 1,652 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Greg Selkoe, CEO SET (@selkoe) We were very small and have grown tremendously in the last few years.
In all, over 280 were approached. 247) and Wet Seal Inc. (No. “I’m proud of what we did with it. Big time. In the early days, there were some tough times when I couldn’t pay the bills, and there were concerns it would all fall apart, but I believed in the concept. You have to be a certain kind of person to be an entrepreneur. Mind you, all of these orders were for jewelry. Its list of creditors stretched across thousands of pages.“I’m sure people on the inside saw that it was going south a long time ago,” said E.P. Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive.When you’re the founder and CEO of a company that, at its peak, was revolutionary in its offerings, employed 250 people, and was regularly doing over $100 million in sales annually, you get blamed when things turn to shit.Culturally speaking, Karmaloop was completely different than anything else in preppy, buttoned-down Beantown. He also has several new ventures he’s trying to get off the ground, including one with Pharrell.“Karmaloop is not my defining brand,” said Selkoe. Greg Sells Fresno. What I would say is there’s some truth to what they’re saying, and certain people are saying things because they weren’t included.”The company implemented a drop-shipping strategy late in 2014 and for many that was the last straw. Under the new regime, Karmaloop will no longer feature 500 brands or more because it doesn’t have the bandwidth “to tell 500 brand stories well.”Haber, who took the job because “there’s an enormous amount of good to be saved,” helped steer Karmaloop out of bankruptcy one week after taking over. They are multicultured, tech savvy, and fashionably independent—and so are we. Any rational person would second-guess your choices. Then he became the CEO and all of a sudden it’s like a $100 million business. The specialty sites weren’t completely shut down until the fall of 2014, and coupled with 2011’s other failure, it proved debilitating.According to Selkoe, in 2013, investors no longer found e-commerce all that attractive. The company threw $14 million into the project.KLTV launched online in 2008 as a broadband entertainment network, but the end goal was cable distribution. Fifteen years later, for richer and poorer, Karmaloop and Selkoe are officially separated and he insists he’s only looking forward. I was trying to work with them because I believed that Karmaloop had a lot in play and there was a lot the brand could still do.“A lot of people have said to me, when you owe someone tens of millions of a dollars, and they’re the senior lender, you don’t really own your company anymore. Several said bonuses were promised but never delivered.“Believe me, I wasn’t out having any fun” said Selkoe. “It helped us get tight with a lot of these artists that were up-and-coming.”Long days frequently turned into long nights. “The people, who are watching us closely, want to see how well and confidently we take those obvious steps...without tripping up too much.”Many brand owners agreed that Karmaloop was worth saving. “Unfortunately they did, far more than I would have liked. “We made awesome numbers, albeit at a very low profit.”Driving massive sales through deep discounting was the directive.