At first, confidence was the key to Ryan Bartlett’s success. Then, it was nearly his downfall.
When Bartlett and a couple friends pooled $3,000 to launch men’s apparel brand True Classic in 2019, he’d never sold clothing before. But the idea behind True Classic, affordable shirts built to flatteringly fit the everyman, seemed to resonate with people.
The company brought in more than $26,000 in revenue in just its first month of operations, Bartlett says.
The following year, when it came time to order new inventory for 2021, Bartlett overestimated how many units his business might sell, and requested more clothing than the company could afford to buy. The mistake, he says, nearly put True Classic out of business.
“It was the stupidest decision we ever made, because it took us a good year-and-a-half to dig ourselves out of that hole,” Bartlett tells CNBC Make It.
He and his co-founders — Nick Ventura and Matthew Winnick — spent more than two years trying to fix the problem. They shrunk their company’s profit margins, paid vendors more than $1 million extra in interest payments and took money from a financing company in exchange for a percentage of future revenue.
Now, finally, True Classic is once again positioned to compete with direct-to-consumer rivals like Everlane and Vuori, and clothing giants like Nike and Ralph Lauren. The company is on pace to bring in $250 million in 2023 revenue, which would match its total lifetime sales figure in just one year, Bartlett says.
His plan to survive and thrive, he adds: Lean on the lessons he learned from nearly going under.
Launching with $3,000 and Facebook ads
After beginning his career as a failed musician, mostly spent playing piano in restaurants, Bartlett landed a job in digital marketing. He later launched his own business-to-business agency, Los Angeles-based SEO Direct.
In 2018, Bartlett began thinking about combining marketing and apparel. He’d “always loved fashion,” he says, and he’d grown frustrated buying shirts…
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