True Classic bet $40M on 2021 inventory, nearly died, rebuilt to $250M pace (interview)
CNBC Make It interview: CEO Ryan Bartlett recounts the $40M over-order that nearly killed the T-shirt brand and the methodical rebuild to a $250M revenue year.
What was changed
In a CNBC Make It interview, True Classic co-founder and CEO Ryan Bartlett recounts how the men's basics brand started in 2019 with Nick Ventura and Matthew Winnick — $3,000 of pooled savings, $100-a-day Facebook ads — passed $26,000 of revenue in its first month. The mistake came when the trio planned 2021 inventory by gut feel: a 'joke' of a process, he says, that way over-bet on the upside. True Classic spent $40 million on its first inventory order of the year, about twice what it should have ordered, and without enough sales it could not pay vendors on time.
The fix took more than two years. Bartlett shrank profit margins, persuaded vendors to accept long-term payment plans with interest — costing more than $1 million extra — and took on Wayflyer, an inventory financier that charges 2% to 8% of the loan amount on repayment, as a lifeline. He also stopped running the company on instinct: True Classic hired demand planners with retail experience among its now 60 employees, and new bets go through a methodical process targeting the middle or lower end of forecasts — 'if we sell out, we sell out,' he says.
By August 2023 the brand was on pace for $250 million of 2023 revenue, matching its entire lifetime sales in a single year, Bartlett says; international expansion, built with the demand planners' help, already contributed 30% of revenue. He frames the episode as the price of overconfidence: a $100-a-day ad experiment that became a real business nearly died from one gut-feel order.
Why it worked
The numbers are the founder's own account to CNBC Make It, not filings — treat the $250M pace and 30% international share as self-reported.
It is a clean anatomy of inventory failure in DTC apparel: the growth was real, the planning process was not.
The recovery mechanics are unusually specific for a private company: restructured vendor terms costing $1M+ in interest and Wayflyer financing at a 2–8% cost of capital.
The organizational fix — hired demand planners, middle-of-forecast bets — shows exactly what 'learning from failure' changed in how the company decides.
What can be applied
Over-ordering to chase upside can kill a working business; betting conservatively — 'if we sell out, we sell out' — plus professional demand planning turns survival into scale.
Aftermath
As of the August 2023 interview, True Classic had 60 employees including a demand-planning team, and Bartlett said the company now bets 'in the middle to on the lower end' on inventory. He said he aims to build True Classic into a billion-dollar company, against rivals he sized for context: Vuori valued at $4 billion, Ralph Lauren at about $8 billion in market cap, Nike at about $166.5 billion. No further funding or ownership changes were reported in the piece.