Arielle Charnas' company, Something Navy, is floundering amid dwindling sales, an employee exodus, and furious suppliers

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The India-based supplier was incensed. It was June, and buzzy clothing brand Something Navy — founded by the influencer Arielle Charnas — was late in paying him for $364,000 in merchandise. Yet there Charnas was on social media, throwing lavish parties at her $150,000-a-month summer rental in the Hamptons.

First there was the rainbow-themed birthday party for two of her daughters, turning 1 and 4, replete with a ball pit, bounce house, and rainbow hair braiding and sand-art stations. Then came Charnas' 35th birthday party, where a circus performer floated inside a translucent ball in the swimming pool as guests drank Don Julio tequila under a massive white tent. As befitting a New York fashion influencer, both parties were documented by a photographer and videographer and splashed across the internet for all to see.

The tequila and other party favors were sponsored, but the sight of the festivities still stung for the supplier, who looked up Charnas on Instagram after Something Navy missed its first payment this spring.

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Charnas "is having an amazingly awesome time in life," he said, but her "employees and suppliers are suffering."

From the outside, it doesn't look as if Charnas' company is in trouble. The fashion blogger turned designer launched Something Navy in July 2020 with the help of big-name investors including the Hong Kong billionaire Silas Chou — who invested in Michael Kors — the Rent the Runway cofounder Jenny Fleiss, and BoxGroup. Something Navy sells women's and children's clothing that range from $45 for a kids long-sleeve tee to $450 for a fringed wool coat. In its first year of business, the company said, it brought in $32 million in revenue, and it opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Manhattan. Since then, it's ventured into homewares and has collaborated with everyone from the sneaker company Superga to the clothing line Ba&sh Paris. In November 2021, Charnas said the company planned to open 15 more storefronts by the end of 2022. 

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Arielle Charnas and her husband, Brandon Charnas. Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Breast Cancer Research Foundation

But behind the scenes, Something Navy has been in a tailspin amid an employee exodus, paltry sales, and delayed payments to suppliers, freelancers, and models, according to interviews with more than 20 people, including former and current employees and other associates of the brand. This year alone, at least 22 employees have left the company (28 full-time staffers remain). Employees told Insider that Something Navy CEO Matt Scanlan — also the CEO of the clothing companies Naadam and Thakoon — boasted to Charnas and other employees that business was booming, while things were actually falling apart. Things have gotten so bad that many of the factories with whom Something Navy works are refusing to ship any more product to the company until they get paid, former and current employees told Insider. A December business-credit report said Something Navy had a "higher than average risk of discontinued operations."

Something Navy was a clusterfuck. Like, bleeding.

Meanwhile, Charnas — despite being the face of Something Navy and its chief creative officer — is increasingly detached from her own business, people say, more often photographed wearing designer pieces like $2,600 Hermès boots and a $3,900 leather jacket from Khaite than clothing from her own brand. Last month, when Something Navy hired Betty Wang as president to focus on the brand's "opportunities for growth," Charnas didn't acknowledge the news on Instagram. For some former employees, Wang's hiring, viewed merely as "Matt's Band-Aid," came too late.

This week, Charnas and her husband, Brandon Charnas, who has a real-estate company, became enveloped in a tornado of speculation about the state of Something Navy's business and their personal lives. Charnas' representative issued a statement on Wednesday dismissing divorce chatter, and Scanlan, the CEO, issued his own statement, denying that Brandon Charnas had been embezzling from Something Navy, a rumor that had rapidly spread on Reddit and the gossip Instagram account Deuxmoi. 

But the assurances largely didn't address the internal concerns shared with Insider by current and former employees, who wonder whether Something Navy's days are numbered.

"Something Navy was a clusterfuck. Like, bleeding," one former high-ranking Something Navy team member who left the company in 2021 told Insider. She added, "I'm just shocked it hasn't tanked already."


This year, nearly half of Something Navy's full-time workforce has left, according to Insider's count through LinkedIn and conversations with former staffers.

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The employee exodus includes the director of brand partnerships Erin Lauzen, who left in November, as well as the early employees Anna Sutton, the head of content and marketing, and Tara Moni, the vice president of strategic partnerships and marketplace, both of whom had been with the brand since 2018. Another early employee, the art director Sydney Mastrandrea, parted ways with Something Navy this summer, as did the senior vice president of media sales and partnerships Meghan Guffey and the senior vice president of product Nicole Peyser.

arielle charnas poses with something navy employees
Four of the Something Navy employees pictured left the company this year. Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images for Beach Magazine

Several former employees told Insider they cut ties with Something Navy because they saw signs the company was struggling. "They were constantly late on pretty much every payment," the former high-ranking team member said. (In a statement to Insider, Scanlan said he understood that some employees "may have decided that a start up was not the right environment for them at this time.")

The India-based supplier said that when Something Navy stopped paying him in June, he received constant excuses: It was waiting on a loan, or needed more time. "Then there's radio silence," he said. In July, he flew to New York City to confront Scanlan in person, but he still wasn't paid. Once Insider began contacting people for this story in September, Something Navy reached out to say it would pay the supplier in full, he said. The company paid off most of its $364,000 balance, the supplier said, but he was still short $20,000 — until Tuesday, when Something Navy paid him the remainder, four days after receiving a fact-check document from Insider detailing his complaints.

Something similar happened to Ayush Murarka, a supplier in the Indian city of Kolkata. In September, he texted Insider that Something Navy was several months late paying for a clothing order and that he hadn't been able to pay his workers as a result. Less than a week later, around the same time the other Indian supplier heard from Something Navy, Murarka said that the company had paid him in full and that they were on good terms.

Brand Design Switzerland, a small supplier that manufactured 3,000 euros' worth of samples for Something Navy in the spring, still hadn't been paid as of November. An employee at the company said they'd repeatedly emailed Something Navy and called Scanlan's cellphone but received no response.

Contract employees have also been left in the lurch. Dana Conlin, a model hired for a half-day shoot at New York City's Daylight Studio in March, said that Something Navy didn't pay her the $2,000 she was owed until November and that she'd been close to taking the company to small-claims court. Zhansaya Dixon, the mother of a 5-year-old model named Navy, said she enjoyed working with Something Navy but noted that she still hasn't been paid for two shoots in April and May.

A former freelancer who wrote for Something Navy's blog said she "cut ties" with the company after it repeatedly missed payment deadlines — in one case, an invoice for several hundred dollars was paid more than three months late. She said she'd never experienced such lengthy delays with other publications.

Several current and former Something Navy employees told Insider they'd been inundated with emails since the spring from suppliers, freelancers, and models asking where their money was.

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One supplier emailed Scanlan that their business would be in jeopardy if they weren't paid; others threatened to terminate their contracts. Several people said they or their employees' livelihoods depended on being paid. Employees felt especially disturbed by the emails as they observed Charnas' party-filled summer in the Hamptons. "Why is the company involved or spending on a birthday party when the bills can't be paid?" asked one former employee, who was pulled from her normal work duties to plan Charnas' 35th birthday festivities.

Another former employee, who received dozens of these emails, said she asked the accounting department for an explanation but it never responded.

Not knowing what else to do, she said, she reached out to Scanlan, who told her to loop him in. In one email viewed by Insider, Scanlan told a supplier that cash was tight but promised payment was on the way.

At an all-hands meeting in August, Scanlan didn't directly address the payment issues. He said every company was going through a tough time because of the economic environment and told employees not to worry and that their salaries wouldn't be affected, current and former staffers said. There was "not much transparency about a plan moving forward, or why we're even in the position that we're in," a current employee said.

In early November, Something Navy employees were paid three days late after what management called a "payroll processing error," according to an email viewed by Insider. Staffers were spooked. The current employee said many believed it was only a matter of time before they, too, stopped being paid.

Scanlan told Insider the company made "every attempt to be transparent with our employees about the health of the organization" and acknowledged that Something Navy had felt the effects of changing consumer trends, COVID-19, and a "shifting investor climate."

A Something Navy representative claimed that all outstanding payments referenced in this article were made before Insider provided the company with fact-checks last week. But when Insider told the representative that the India-based supplier was, in fact, paid only after Insider reached out, the representative didn't respond, nor did they provide documentation for the other payments. Zhansaya Dixon told Insider she still had not received payment at the time of publication. Insider wasn't able to confirm proof of payment with Brand Design Switzerland.


Charnas was 22 when she started Something Navy as a fashion blog in 2009, years before "influencer" became a full-time job. While early style bloggers like Man Repeller's Leandra Medine stood out for their quirky rejection of fashion rules, Charnas' appeal was her girl-next-door quality.

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A slender brunette from Long Island, Charnas grew up in the fashion industry: Her father, Oded Nachmani, cofounded a junior sportswear company that he sold in 2007 before focusing on real estate.

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Charnas started a fashion blog called Something Navy in 2014 while working a retail job in Manhattan. Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for American Eagle

After graduating from Syracuse University, Charnas moved to New York City and started working as a sales associate at Theory. She started her blog on the side, mixing designer pieces like an Isabel Marant sweater with a pair of H&M pants. She was one of the first fashion bloggers to share her life as a mother, discussing postpartum anxiety and showing her firstborn daughter, Ruby — who is now 6 — playing in the bathtub. It seemed as if nothing was off limits to Charnas' followers. She spoke about her ectopic pregnancy, filmed intimate family dinners, and candidly addressed accusations that she was too thin.

"I think she connects to a lot of people by being very real, whether it's about motherhood or moving into a new home," said Fleiss, the Rent the Runway cofounder who was an early investor in Something Navy.

As Charnas' following grew, so did her selling power. In 2016, she landed a partnership with Tresemmé, appearing in a TV commercial. That fall, she walked the runway for the fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff at New York Fashion Week. According to a Women's Wear Daily article, after Charnas posted on Snapchat about a mask from the skincare brand Peter Thomas Roth, the company sold 502 jars — about $17,500 worth of product — in a single day. Even her husband, Brandon Charnas, has said he uses Charnas' following to promote his commercial-real-estate business. "People will hire me because she's given me an audience," he said in 2018.

arielle charnas walks runway with rebecca minkoff fashion week new york city
Charnas' star was on the rise when she walked the runway for the fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff at New York Fashion Week in 2016. Brian Ach/Getty Images for TRESemme

By the fall of 2017, Charnas had amassed a million Instagram followers and signed a licensing partnership with Nordstrom. Her first collaboration with the department-store chain — a capsule collection with Nordstrom's in-house label Treasure & Bond — was "wildly successful" and sold out certain styles in a matter of hours, according to Nordstrom. The following September, Nordstrom and Charnas launched a standalone Something Navy line with pieces like an $89 floral blouse and a $100 pair of polka-dot slingback pumps. The collection was so popular that it sold more than $4 million worth of clothing and accessories in the first day, Business of Fashion reported, crashing Nordstrom's website.

I think she connects to a lot of people by being very real, whether it's about motherhood or moving into a new home.

But to Charnas — who once declared she wouldn't be satisfied until she was "the next Tory Burch" — collaborating with a major retailer didn't give her enough say in the design process or the quality of her clothing. She struck out on her own in the summer of 2019, tapping Scanlan to help build the company. "At the end of the day, I wanted more control," she told CNBC in 2020. "The whole purpose of this brand is to deliver exactly what my followers are asking for." 

Charnas and Scanlan planned to launch Something Navy in March 2020. Then, the coronavirus shut down New York City and most of the world. On March 15, Charnas posted on Instagram that she was feeling sick with a fever, chills, sore throat, and headache. A doctor friend organized a drive-by COVID-19 test at an urgent-care facility on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Charnas documented the saga on Instagram, later informing her followers that she had indeed tested positive for the coronavirus.

Eight days later, Charnas decamped to the Hamptons with her family and their nanny, posting a photo of herself in front of her luxury rental with the caption "fresh air." The internet exploded, with people accusing Charnas of using her personal connections to secure a COVID-19 test amid a nationwide shortage and flouting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommendation to self-isolate after testing positive. The New York Post branded her a "Covidiot blogger," and The Daily Beast reported on her "trail of contagion." Brandon Charnas mocked Instagram followers who criticized his wife's behavior, calling one follower a "loser" in a direct message and telling another: "Who cares? You're irrelevant."

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Charnas and her husband later apologized, but the damage was done. Brands including Amazon, Shopbop, Stuart Weitzman, and Josie Maran pulled their partnerships with Charnas, according to three former employees.

influencer arielle charnas of something navy wears black dress in front of blue background
Charnas took a three-week hiatus from social media after she was branded a "Covidiot blogger." Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

The COVID-19 scandal was "a really big hit," one former staffer said, adding that Something Navy "basically lost all of our biggest partners — Amazon would never work with us again." (An Amazon representative said the company doesn't disclose details of its relationships with creators.)

After the scandal, Charnas took a three-week hiatus from social media. When she returned, she was never quite the same, former employees said. The former high-ranking Something Navy team member said Charnas became "very insecure" and hesitant to post, afraid that her followers would attack her.

The Something Navy launch got pushed back to July, but nonetheless, the rollout was a wild success, according to the company. The first 11-piece collection — which included dresses, jumpsuits, blouses, and denim that cost $65 to $250 — sold $1 million in the first 30 minutes, the company said at the time. Scanlan gushed about Charnas' following, telling CNBC: "I have never seen a community that is as passionate or engaged."


Something Navy continued to expand over the next two years. In the fall of 2020, the company opened its first store in New York City's West Village, followed by locations on the Upper East Side, in Newport Beach, California, and in Los Angeles. To finance these locations, Something Navy partnered with Leap, a startup that helps e-commerce brands open brick-and-mortar stores by covering most of the up-front costs.

Some brands, including Shopbop, eventually worked with Charnas again. Yet as Something Navy grew, so did signs of distress.

Several employees said lackluster sales were a major issue. The current Something Navy employee said that based on data she'd seen, the retail locations most likely don't turn a profit. "They sell, like, five pieces a day," she said. Sales reports viewed by Insider show that Something Navy's most popular styles sell only a handful of units in its four stores weekly.

While the company boasted about its $1 million in gross sales in the first 30 minutes of launching, the collection generated $831,000 in net sales in the first six days, according to an internal document viewed by Insider. 

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The launches became less and less lucrative over time, and ever-bigger markdowns weren't yielding the sales the company needed, current and former staffers said. During one weeklong sale in 2021, Something Navy sold only about $4,000 in merchandise both online and in stores, the former high-ranking team member said.

"The performance of the business was so poor," the former high-ranking Something Navy team member said. "They had more inventory than they knew what to do with."

At the same time, the high-ranking employee said, customer-service tickets were flooding in with complaints about the lack of racial and body-size diversity of the models, the restocking fee for returns — currently $12.75 — and the inconsistent sizing. (The Something Navy representative noted that they're a tiny team and "it costs us money and time to restock returns and our policies transparently reflect this.")

After the brand's launch, both Something Navy's and Charnas' Instagram accounts suffered from low engagement. A former employee familiar with the company's social-media performance said a 2021 analytics report showed a more-than-50% drop in engagement from the prior summer for both accounts. "I don't think it ever bounced back," the former employee said. A separate report viewed by Insider showed that engagement on Charnas' account dropped by more than 90% from June 2021 to January 2022. 

The representative told Insider that "Something Navy and Arielle's specific engagement rates have followed industry wide shifts." Scanlan added that while there are "up and downs" for any start-up, Something Navy was "on solid footing."

But a person familiar with Charnas and her husband said the company is "struggling to maximize the potential Arielle has."

"Arielle is a great personal story of achieving this strong of a brand and level of influence," this person said. "While she's done a great job at continuing to evolve her brand, she has not been privy to the different financial decisions at Something Navy, but hopefully the company can catch up to her over time."


Since launching Something Navy, Charnas has grown increasingly disengaged from the day-to-day operation of her company. She's rarely seen at the Something Navy office. On Instagram earlier this year, Charnas said her typical working hours were 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

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"Arielle was kind of checked out," said a former staffer who worked at Something Navy in 2020 and 2021. 

During the design process, Charnas would frequently flip-flop, approving certain styles one day and then deciding she didn't like them after the samples arrived, according to a former employee. ("Like any normal design process, some styles get dropped if sample updates have shifted from the original intent of the design direction," the representative said.)

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Several former employees said Charnas seemed "checked out" of running her company. Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Saks Fifth Avenue

Most notably, Charnas seemed reluctant to do the one thing that had made her so successful: Promote her company on social media. While she regularly tries on pieces from the collection in her apartment, she rarely steps out in them, something that hasn't gone unnoticed by fans and colleagues.

According to two former employees, Charnas disliked advertising Something Navy products because those posts didn't perform as well as those for brand partners like Shopbop. She'd also be accused of being too self-promotional by followers, or they'd complain that a style she'd worn wasn't available yet, the two former employees said. The Something Navy representative said this was false: "Arielle posts both Something Navy and content for brand partners, and affiliate revenue on her personal channel goes to Something Navy."

Something Navy made a significant amount of its money through brand partnerships, employees said — Charnas could pull in about $20,000 for a paid Instagram post in her feed, and $8,000 to $10,000 for three posts to her story with a swipe-up link, according to one former employee. But Charnas could be difficult to wrangle for photo shoots. 

Charnas hated posting for certain brands. Three former employees said staffers had to beg her to make good on Something Navy's contract with Vivrelle, a luxury-accessory rental company, because she didn't want her followers to think she rented handbags. Charnas eventually agreed to do the posts — as long as she was photographed only with specific pieces from designers like Chanel and Bottega Veneta, said the former staffer who discussed the value of Charnas' paid posts. (Another former employee said Charnas resisted the partnership because she was worried her followers wouldn't believe she'd rented bags — "it would seem very fake.")

Charnas sometimes disregarded brands' partnership requests. She mispronounced the names of brands, including Vivrelle and the skincare brand Elemis, in videos, according to two former staffers (Elemis asked that Charnas reshoot the video).

"We collaborate closely with our partners to ensure their needs and goals are understood, met, and supported through our work together," the Something Navy representative said.

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On other occasions, Charnas would inform employees she'd be unavailable for weeks at a time and demand to shoot the entire month's partnership content in a single day, the former staffer said. This was a headache for Something Navy staffers, who had to rush to prepare scripts and order samples amid a global supply-chain crisis. The Something Navy representative said, "In order to most efficiently utilize staff time and resources, Something Navy would shoot multiple sets of content within a single session."

Charnas' apparent aversion to brand partnerships bewildered her staffers, who didn't understand why she was kneecapping her own business. 

"I think she was just sick of it," the former staffer said.


While Charnas is the face of Something Navy, Scanlan is the one steering the ship. Several former employees said they left the company because of Scanlan, who they said was not transparent about how the brand was doing or his plans for the future.

The former high-ranking Something Navy team member compared Scanlan to the WeWork cofounder Adam Neumann. Like Neumann, she said, Scanlan exuded a manic energy and had grandiose expectations for the business. He'd rave about Something Navy during rare companywide meetings, while confused employees fielded desperate emails from suppliers over payments.

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CEO Matt Scanlan exuded a manic energy and had grandiose expectations for the business, one former employee said, reminding her of WeWork founder Adam Neumann. Darian DiCianno/BFA

Scanlan, a 34-year-old former Wall Streeter and New York University dropout, cofounded the cashmere company Naadam in 2013. He bought the fashion brand Thakoon in 2019 under the umbrella of the Naadam Collective. Since then, Scanlan has acquired at least three other brands: the women's clothing brand Ivory Ella, the sustainable-packaging company Package Free, and the apparel company United by Blue, according to the fashion publication Glossy.

Scanlan said he met Charnas in 2018 when his company Naadam hired her to promote the brand. Naadam's partnership with the influencer "almost 10-timed our money in something like 48 hours," he later told Women's Wear Daily. In the summer of 2019, Charnas branched out on her own and brought Scanlan on board as CEO, with Charnas maintaining a minority ownership stake in Something Navy. 

Scanlan seemed reluctant to respond to waning sales with measures like pulling back on inventory or furloughing, three former staffers said. Instead, he relied solely on flash sales and ever-larger discounts. And he spent as though business were great, insisting on launching a new collection every month (most contemporary brands launch about one-third that number). With each launch came a new photo shoot in Manhattan, the Hamptons, or Miami with models from the prestigious Wilhelmina agency. Something Navy spent $24,000 on three Wilhelmina models for a 2021 shoot, according to the former high-ranking team member. 

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The employee added that at one point in 2021, even as sales were meager, Something Navy spent $40,000 a week on paid social media on Facebook and Instagram, which generated minuscule returns and sometimes losses. Another former employee said $40,000 was an "extremely high" amount for a company of Something Navy's size to spend on paid social media. "Something Navy's return on acquisition spending is consistent with broader market trends in paid spend," the representative said. 

Former employees said the CEO shielded Charnas from the company's struggles. "Matt was adamant that no one could talk to Arielle or her husband, Brandon, about the performance of the business," the former high-ranking team member said. "If she ever asked about something, you had to say it was amazing, that everyone loved it. The brand was great. Sales were great." 

Two people close to the company confirmed that Scanlan concealed the business' poor performance from Charnas and said that she was devastated when she found out about the company's struggles this spring.

Matt was adamant that no one could talk to Arielle or her husband, Brandon, about the performance of the business.

For Charnas' 35th birthday in June, Scanlan directed employees across teams to set aside their usual work for two weeks to help plan and secure brand sponsorships for Charnas' party, three former employees said. The product and design team created Something Navy tote bags and baseball caps for guests to take home, and brand-partnerships staffers secured sponsorships for everything from ride shares to Vietri glassware. At one point Scanlan even offered to mix drinks himself when staffers were having trouble finding enough bartenders, the former employees said. Scanlan told staffers the party "was a big moment for the brand," one person said, but employees were skeptical. "We knew it was a big moment for Arielle."

"As Arielle is the face of the brand, Something Navy has leveraged opportunities like this party as a revenue generator," the Something Navy representative said. "While Arielle paid for the party personally, the company sold partnership opportunities for the event." The representative added that Something Navy paid for company activations and merchandise featured at the event, and that the party was "profitable for the company."

This fall, Something Navy has been in the midst of a rebrand that's been in the works for more than a year, according to a former staffer. The brand wants to transition from a "girly, almost juvenile" style, she said, to a more elevated aesthetic more in line with The Row, one of Charnas' favorite brands, where a pair of jeans can cost $750.

While Something Navy's first collection included a cutesy ruffle-sleeve top for $85 and a $165 leopard-print jumpsuit, its new one features a $325 halter-neck gown and a sleek one-shoulder cutout gown for $275.

The tone on Charnas' personal Instagram has likewise shifted: relatable, smiling posts have given way to muted, underexposed shots of the influencer hiding her face behind sunglasses. "Even the way she dresses now, it's just different. It feels older and more in the luxury space," one former employee said. But, she added, "that's not what people were following her for."

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Scanlan bet big on Charnas' social-media following and her ability to sell. In 2020, the CEO said he'd "always planned" for Something Navy to be more profitable than Naadam. The company is part of his grand plan for a fashion empire, something akin to "the next LVMH." That means growing Something Navy beyond its influencer founder. "The only way the brand is successful long term is if you're walking into a store and you see the clothing hanging on a rack, and you go, 'I want that' — regardless of if you've ever heard of Arielle," Scanlan told Business of Fashion last year. "That was always our goal."

But former employees say that judging by Something Navy's sales numbers and money woes, the brand is falling short at attracting new customers. The December credit report from the business-analytics company Dun & Bradstreet raised "stability concerns" for Something Navy over the next 12 months and gave the company a maximum credit recommendation of $9,000.

In October, Charnas posted on Instagram that Something Navy — which has four stores — was holding off on opening more retail locations (apart from one in Miami in 2023) because of the current economic environment. In August, Charnas told People magazine that the brand was pivoting from releasing monthly collections to seasonal ones. As of November, many of Something Navy's factories (which total 10 to 15) still had not been paid and were refusing to send any product to the clothing brand until they received payment, according to the current employee. The India-based supplier called the company "the Bernie Madoff of fashion."

What staffers have realized is that Charnas is best at selling other people's clothes. Charnas herself has said buying clothes from an influencer-founded brand is "just not something that feels cool."

Not all influencer brands survive: The model and TV presenter Alexa Chung, who has quadruple Charnas' Instagram followers, shut down her fashion line in March after five years. The influencer Tati Westbrook closed her beauty brand in 2021 after just two years. Something Navy seems to be struggling with a paradox familiar to influencer-run brands: Charnas is what drew in customers in the first place. But for the brand to stand on its own, customers need to love the product.

"An influencer can convince their base to buy something once," Eric Fisch, the head of retail and apparel for commercial banking at HSBC, told Insider. "But they won't buy it again if the product isn't good." 

Meanwhile, the gulf between Charnas and her company is as wide as ever, and employees wonder whether she's fully invested in the brand's success. "I think she's conflicted with what she really wants to do and how she wants to spend her time," one former employee said.

For many former staffers, seeing the lavishness of Charnas' lifestyle while her company stiffed contractors and suppliers was more than they could put up with, a recently departed staffer said. 

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"There's no future for the company," she said. "Because I don't think there's a company without Arielle. And at the end of the day, Arielle is just over it."

Additional reporting by Madeline Berg.

Do you have information to share? Email the reporter at kwarren@businessinsider.com.

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