What Happened to BootayBag? The Once Thriving Company Has Completely Disappeared

If you order a product from a company, you expect to receive the product. Some companies may not be as legitimate as others, so you might receive a product that doesn't exactly match the description, but you at least expect to receive something somewhat close to what you ordered. What happens if not only do you receive nothing, but the company suddenly drops off the face of the planet?

This is exactly what subscription customers to Shark Tank success BootayBag are suddenly wondering after the company went completely dark, disappearing from the internet. So what on earth happened? Here's what we know about the company's sudden disappearance amid what seemed to be a year of frustration for customers.

TikTok user Kayla Jade (@kjadeg) posted a video to the platform asking a question that many people are asking themselves: "PLEASE tell me how this entire brand disappeared and no one is talking about it?"

The brand in question? A company that once blew the Shark Tank sharks out of the water with her success and promise of future growth: BootayBag, a subscription underwear and accessory company started by CEO Ellyette "Elly" Gheno.

Kayla Jade questioned what happened to the brand after discovering that its Instagram page had been removed and the company's website was up for grabs on GoDaddy. The CEO's personal TikTok is still up, but there's no explanation on her page, and comments are turned off. The last post is from September. Comments on Elly's Instagram are still on, for now, but none of the questions from frustrated customers have been answered.

The last post on both social media accounts show Elly apparently traveling to Turks and Caicos to get married.

Kayla Jade explains that she has been a customer for six years and is finding herself being charged for products she has no way of receiving now that the company appears to be gone. So what happened? It's unclear. Unfortunately, angry customers have found their emails and calls go unanswered, and they are being forced to go through their banks to dispute recurrent charges that the company keeps withdrawing.

However, not all of the company's communication has gone dark. On Dec 20, 2024, the CEO posted to her blog. The post was titled "Thank You" and included tips on gratitude and lessons for success, which fits with the theme of her overall blog. The post doesn't make any mention of the company's closure or what customers can do. It concludes with, "Here’s to owning our stories, building our boxes, and thriving in the in-betweens."

On one Reddit thread discussing the sudden apparent shutdown, one customer wrote, "They scammed me recently. I ordered from them 11/8 and they never shipped it. Wouldn’t respond to my emails. Blocked my email address. Then I messaged them on Insta asking for help and they blocked me there too. I had to open a dispute with my bank and reported them to the Better Business Bureau with all my screenshots."

Others said they too had opened disputes with their banks.

But even prior to the sudden and shocking silence from BootayBag, 2024 wasn't exactly the year of glowing reviews for the company.

On one Reddit thread prior to the apparent shutdown, customers complained about the quality of the company's products and their services. One user posted, "I LOVED my monthly undies but this year each month gets worse and worse. The quality and sizing has been so disappointing. Finally decided to cancel but curious if anyone knows why the company has been going downhill recently?"

Users commiserated, saying that the quality hadn't been the same recently. One user commented just a few days after the original post, "I was subscribed for years. Quality was starting to go way down and I was considering canceling. I paused my subscription and decided to revisit later. Fast forward; the website: gone, social media: gone, CEO: account on private.

And SURPRISE! I have been charged for orders I have never received from a company that no longer exists." They added, "Ellyette Rae is a thief."

Customers also say that they had been receiving e-mails fairly regularly from the company even after orders stopped arriving, but the e-mails provided no insight into why their orders weren't being delivered. Some e-mails even cryptically referred to "starting over" and "going with your gut."

It's not yet clear what happened with BootayBag or Elly Gheno, but customers are demanding answers. With pressure increasing all over social media for the brand to provide at least some answers, a reckoning must be on the horizon.

If nothing else, the company's assets will find themselves beset with bank dispute after bank dispute if they don't come forward soon and provide answers to the customers who are allegedly being cheated out of their money with no orders in sight.