'All my eggs in the Facebook basket': True Classic CEO Ryan Bartlett on growing a DTC brand on paid social

Men's apparel brand True Classic was able to become a $250 million company -- and it thanks Facebook for its success.

"I knew I was going to put all my eggs in the Facebook basket," said co-founder and CEO Ryan Bartlett. Lucky for him, the company launched before the changes to iOS 14, and his thesis worked. The company says it's profitable, has sold over $250 million worth of goods since its launch in 2019 and now has five stores open around the U.S.

Bartlett joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about True Classic's growth strategy -- as well as what it takes to rely on social media in the current climate.

Bartlett admits that the performance marketing space has gotten much more difficult over the years, but he still believes Facebook is a great channel for growth. The company spends as much as $100,000 on Meta platforms each day, which represents around 70% of its total marketing budget.

"We have definitely diversified away from Facebook, because we realized that if anything ever goes wrong with Facebook, we can just tank the business," Bartlett said. "So we've been very strategic about spending more on Google, spending more on non-branded search on Amazon, spending more on podcasts and OTT -- but really testing into it. We really are sticklers on data and analytics and understanding attribution at the highest levels."

Even though paid social is so important to True Classic's business model, Bartlett also thinks the product is just as important. The company makes predominately casualwear, like crewneck t-shirts.

"I wanted to create something very narrow and a very specific SKU, which was just the t-shirt -- just the crewneck t-shirt," Bartlett said. "I wanted to make the best possible version of that I possibly could, I wanted to prove it out. And once I did, we eventually started rolling out into every single category that you see on the website now, which is activewear, denim, underwear, socks, absolutely everything."

Now that True Classic has found a formula that's worked, the focus is on growing it as big as possible. For example, last year the company launched internationally -- "it was like 30% of the business overnight," Bartlett said. "So that was a monster for us. And we it was literally just flicked the light switch on and go." In the beginning, the company launched in dozens of countries including most of Europe and Australia -- but still shipped from the U.S. Now, True Classic is trying to tweak its international strategy even more by seeking out fulfillment centers overseas and producing content in native languages. Additionally, the brand is also expanding into womenswear.

For now, expanding beyond the U.S. and into the women's category are what's taking up a lot of Bartlett's time. "Between those two initiatives, I really got my hands full," he said.