Last year the Sonja by Sonja Morgan clothing line was pulling in $50k a month, but Sonja wasn’t seeing a penny of it. On tonight’s episode of Real Housewives of New York City, Sonja calls in friend Ramona Singer to sit down with her business partners and investigate where the money’s going.
Ramona begins the talk by explaining that she had a very successful business for a long time buying closeouts, so she knows what’s what in this industry. Ramona started RMS Fashions, Inc with a $70,000 loan from her father when she was 30-years-old. She had previously worked as a buyer for Macy’s, which gave her the experience to start her own business. The business model for RMS Fashions is simple: they would buy out excess inventory from department stores and sell it to discount resellers.
“My goal mainly is for Sonja to get the money, or as everybody would say ‘Show me the coin,’” Ramona says in confessional.
Ramona reasons with $600 revenue a year, the company should be making a $400k profit. She then says Sonja’s clothing business should be making enough that she should be getting a payment every month now.
Instead of giving any clarity, one of Sonja’s partners, possibly named Guraff (correct spelling unknown, just going off of the sound,) asks Ramona what she thinks their website expenses are, a question she can’t answer because she doesn’t have access to their information. She answers that every business is different, so she doesn’t know. He then asks Ramona if she would like to run the website and be the creative director of the business, another deflection which seems a little passive aggressive.
Ramona responds that she’d be happy to be an unpaid advisor, but nothing more. She then doubles down on her opition that Sonja should be seeing at least some of the gross profits by now, even if it’s only a few thousand dollars.
At this point, the other business partner, Laura, mentions uncashed checks and Guraff says that Sonja has $10,000 in uncashed checks from the business. Sonja disagrees and says maybe she has $2,000 in uncashed checks. Laura then says maybe Sonja isn’t getting her mail. Guraff says he isn’t a liar, and he’s sure it was $10,000, while Sonja argues it was $2,000.
Their voices rise and eventually Sonja just melts down and starts making noises while she pulls at her own hair.
This February (2021) Sonja by Sonja Morgan started selling at Walmart, which happened after the business meeting filmed for Season 13, episode 13.
She’s tried to have a fashion brand before with Sonja Morgan New York. While that didn’t work out, it sounds like Sonja by Sonja Morgan is at least pulling in some numbers. Where the numbers are going is another matter.
