About the brand  

What makes a true, classic t-shirt?

That’s what the founders of True Classic sought to create in 2019. They wanted to create a t-shirt that wasn’t a $5 throwaway or a $100+ designer garment—something that was comfortable and felt good on. 

The founders, Ryan Bartlett, Nick Ventura, and Matt Winnick, clearly struck a chord in the men's market. The company has bootstrapped its way to 9-figures in just two years and has become one of the fastest-growing D2C brands. 

What started with just one color and two styles has grown to include a variety of men’s basics sold in over 180 countries.

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“We really embrace that look-good, feel-good attitude and giving men confidence. We're not selling t-shirts, we're selling an emotion. We started out as True Classic Tees selling t-shirts for about two years, and now we've expanded into athletic wear, bottoms, chinos, denim, boxers, socks, accessories, you name it.”
Adam Hutton, Sr Manager of Customer Monetization

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The challenge

Combating high customer acquisition costs with even higher LTV 

Part of True Classic’s success stems from its willingness to test marketing strategies and its adherence to the data. The team is laser-focused on sales numbers, paying particular attention to gross margins per customer and repeat purchase rate. 

As with most e-commerce businesses, high customer acquisition rates mean keeping those customers is vital to overall success. That’s why creating a True Classic app with Tapcart was a top priority.

Even though they had plenty of other successful marketing channels, they knew an app would add to their retention stack. With such a big focus on retaining their customers, the True Classic team zeroed in on a holistic approach to marketing. They knew retargeting is about more than an SMS message or paid ad—it was about incremental touch points across the brand.

The True Classic team knew from their competitors that an app creates more stickiness for their best customers, giving them a place to go for a superior mobile  experience that’s curated to the shopper.  They wanted an app because it can deliver the right message at the right time to the right person. They needed a solution that would let them own their mobile app channel without expending too many resources.

“Our goal was to get people in a curated experience. When you're on the website, you may have a browser pop-up, or you're distracted by another tab. [An app] is a very personalized, curated shopping experience for the customer that is a more frictionless shopping experience."
Adam Hutton, Sr Manager of Customer Monetization

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The solution

Making an app the center of their retention tech stack

True Classic partnered with Tapcart over two years ago, and it has proven to be a valuable part of their retention tech stack. 

Keeping retention and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) in mind, the True Classic team has leaned on the app to personalize the customer experience and take any friction out of the equation. From a push notification, it’s only a few taps for a customer to make their next purchase.

True Classic also owns its app audience and knows it can always reach its customers instantly and directly through push notifications. It’s a much easier way to speak to their audience than sending messages out on other marketing channels with smaller reaches. Brands can own their push subscriber list with a mobile app, and you don’t have to rely on social media algorithms or third-party SMS services to deliver your message. Push serves a different purpose—it’s the best-in-class way to communicate with your top customers.

“If I want to be the best in class, I need to provide a best-in-class experience and an app allows you to do that. The app gives you the avenue to provide that experience that’s harder to obtain via a website.”
Adam Hutton, Sr Manager of Customer Monetization

The result

Capturing customers that spend more in-app, more often and longer

With a few years of testing, and leaning on Tapcart’s white-glove service, True Classic sees the 360-degree value of an app. App subscribers are doubling day over day, and True Classic now has customers in over 180 countries.

App users repurchase more frequently than non-app customers, spend 11% more with every purchase and have a higher lifetime value. The app converts almost 200% more than their mobile website and 23% more than their desktop site.

Knowing that their app customers are more valuable, True Classic spends time driving customers to download through discounts and app-exclusive flash sales. Their Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions saw insane results because customers were prompted to download the app to get first access to the sales. 

Promoting their app during BFCM is a part of a larger strategy — True Classic was able to grow a huge app customer base that they could continue to engage with after peak season. Since then, the team has expanded their app globally, and they have continued to hit new records in their app. By scaling the app to over 180 countries, they saw a 25% higher conversion rate, plus they had the highest new app signups and nearly 1,000 new user signups.

The True Classic team values the partnership they have with Tapcart, relying on their help with execution and strategy to boost True Classic’s meteoric success.

“We see the value and the partnership overall, and that's been really paramount to the success of True Classic.”
Adam Hutton, Sr Manager of Customer Monetization

Want to learn more about how an app can boost LTV & overall retention for your business? ‍

Chat with our team of mobile experts and we’ll give you a quick walkthrough of the Tapcart platform.