Inside Richard Saghian’s $300 Million-Plus Property Portfolio
Richard Saghian knows how to move merchandise. Since founding Fashion Nova in 2006, he’s turned a single Los Angeles retail business into a fast-fashion empire. His latest obsession, however, has nothing to do with what’s trending on Instagram. The son of an Iranian immigrant who owned a women’s clothing store in Los Angeles’s Fashion District, Saghian grew up around the apparel industry before opening his first Fashion Nova outpost in a San Fernando Valley mall. The real turning point came in 2013, when he took the brand online. Fashion Nova already had a sizable Instagram following, thanks to customers and influencers tagging its clothes in their posts, and Saghian turned that online buzz into a marketing machine, churning out hundreds of new styles each week and enlisting celebrities including Cardi B, Kylie Jenner , and Khloé Kardashian to help spread the word. The strategy worked. Fashion Nova grew into a multibillion-dollar business, making Saghian, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $2.1 billion, one of retail’s biggest success stories. Away from the fast-fashion frenzy, the billionaire has developed an appetite for trophy real estate, spending more than $300 million on homes in some of the country’s most coveted markets. His portfolio runs