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True Classic President Adam Eisenstadt on taking the brand from a $40M COVID launch to ~$280M - the international playbook: go broad to learn, run a country-by-country P&L, and keep operations simple.
Adam Eisenstadt, President, True Classic · 24 June 2026 · Venice AMA
Full recording:
True Classic launched as a US direct-to-consumer t-shirt brand in 2020, did about $40M in its first year during COVID, and is on track for roughly $275–280M this year. Adam Eisenstadt joined in 2022 to build the international business - now about $40M across 190 geographies - before running True Classic’s commercial channels and serving as President. In this AMA he walked Venice founders through the international playbook: go broad to learn, run a country-by-country P&L from day zero, and resist the pull toward complexity. The recurring theme is that the brand’s biggest wins came from moving fast and keeping operations simple, while its biggest mistakes came from spending before the numbers were visible.
Five takeaways for Founders:
True Classic switched on international through Global-e, a merchant-of-record partner that handles local currencies, taxes, and entities, then pushed ads across all 190 markets at once rather than picking winners up front. It scaled fast, but without a country-by-country P&L it overspent badly before getting costs under control. Three markets - Canada, Australia, and the UK - quickly emerged as roughly 70% of international revenue, helped by shared language and the ability to run the US site in English without translation.
“We did it across all 190 markets, so we didn’t prioritize a lot of markets, we just said, let’s do it, and let’s learn by doing.”
— Adam Eisenstadt, 12:41
About a year in, with the business past ~$25–30M and 75% of it concentrated in four locations, the math for local warehouses flipped. Importing in bulk means paying duties on the cost of goods - a few dollars for a t-shirt - rather than on its ~$25 retail value, a large saving at scale. The catch: you need a local entity or partner, you tie up cash in inventory, and you inherit allocation decisions about which products to stock where. Adam’s rule is to keep inventory in one place as long as possible and resist the pull toward a perfectly optimized model.
“If you’re importing that product en masse, the cogs of the t-shirt are maybe $4, and then you’re paying the duties on the cogs rather than the retail value.”
— Adam Eisenstadt, 15:11
True Classic treats brand as flexible - funny, accessible, and led by what the creative tells them - and leans on creative diversity rather than long approval cycles, which Adam sees as a major driver of Meta performance. He contrasted that with his time running the UK business at Bombas, the US sock brand, where over $150k spent on consumer-insights work never changed day-to-day execution. The point: overthinking lets the world move on before you act.
Asked about his biggest mistake, Adam pointed to launching without a real P&L. The media team chased new-customer ROAS that looked strong, but it ignored duties, taxes, and returns - so the business grew while quietly overspending. The fix was recognising that every market needs its own target: a new-customer ROAS of about 1.3 in the US had to be roughly 1.5 in Canada and 1.7 in the UK, because payback periods, retention curves, and P&L lines all differ by country.
On lifetime value, Adam cautioned against presuming cohort differences before launch. True Classic sees better retention in the US but higher short-term LTV internationally because it prices up abroad. The standout finding: after the UK warehouse opened, UK LTV beat the US - orders arriving in about a day and a half created a better “surprise and delight” experience and brought customers back. Across the data, faster shipping consistently improved retention more than localization did.
“UK LTV is better than the US, because people get their orders in a day and a half.”
— Adam Eisenstadt, 34:30
Adam sized the prize bluntly: US e-commerce is about $1 trillion a year, and non-US e-commerce excluding China is about $1.5 trillion. By that logic True Classic’s international business should be larger than its US business - yet it’s about a third of the size. He’s clear the constraint isn’t demand; it’s the capital and focus needed to execute well, and with under 50 full-time staff the marginal dollar still does more in the US (where the brand already spends ~$50M a year on Meta and is growing Amazon ~40%).
“The international business should be 50% bigger than the US business if it was executed to the same quality, but it’s a third of the size.”
— Adam Eisenstadt, 38:07
True Classic’s revenue now splits roughly 60% D2C, around 20% Amazon, and 20% wholesale, and Adam is very bullish on wholesale. The Costco business, launched around April–May last year, is on track for about $35M this year - and it’s not just a revenue line. Because around 80% of US retail is still bought offline, wholesale builds physical availability; in the post-purchase survey, Costco ranks as the third-best source of new customers, behind only Meta and Google.
“80% of retail in the US is bought offline in stores.”
— Adam Eisenstadt, 47:40
Q: Should you localize for non-English markets, or stay English and keep it simple? (Kasper, Timothy)
Adam’s experience is that localization generally helped but inconsistently, and rarely justified the hours. True Classic runs one website localized through themes - one catalog, not separate storefronts - to avoid duplicating Klaviyo, payments, and other SaaS per domain, and spends the saved effort on local price points (ending in .99/.95) rather than raw FX conversions. His framing: prioritize the home market, then the US, because language consistency and a single operation keep you fast. Truly localizing Germany, France, or Italy would need a step-function investment and an in-market team, not an agency.
Q: How do you structure teams and bonuses across channels and countries? (Boet)
True Classic made roles omnichannel and omni-country early - functional experts own their area across every channel and market - with general managers acting as a “quarterback” and safety net. The trade-off is that the much larger US business can crowd out international attention. Bonuses are handled case-by-case rather than by a fixed rule.
Q: How do you discount across channels while building a premium brand? (Wouter)
Adam’s preferred fix is serving a different assortment or pack structure per channel so prices aren’t directly comparable - the way Dr. Squatch sells 10-packs on Amazon. On premium positioning, he leans into handing economics back to customers who buy more (volume discounts reach ~55–60% off), arguing that scarcity, urgency, and social proof matter when 97 of 100 site visitors don’t convert.
Q: How do you find the personas behind different ads and landing pages? (Frederick)
Work problem-solution, and mine the data you already have: customer-service tickets (e.g., via Gorgias), social comments, and tools like OuterSignal that enrich customer records into personas by market. Most valuable of all, Adam said, is simply calling your ten best or most recent customers and asking them - a monthly habit at True Classic that consistently surfaces things like Amazon acting as an acquisition channel into D2C.
“I really would just get on the phone with a bunch of customers and get a sense of it.”
— Adam Eisenstadt, 53:50
Adam Eisenstadt is President of True Classic, the US apparel brand he joined in 2022 to launch and scale its international business before taking on its commercial channels and, most recently, a company-wide AI transformation role. He previously served as GM UK at Bombas and Global Commercial Director at Deliveroo. Adam is a Venice Member - say hi in Slack.
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