How Buck Mason Sold 1 Million Tees With No VC Funding

While plenty of direct-to-consumer companies are striving for unicorn status, digitally native menswear company Buck Mason found chasing funding and quick growth led nowhere fast. Co-founders Sasha Koehn and Erik Allen Ford started the brand in 2013 with the idea of taking the most essential items in a man’s closet and making them better. With consumers shifting away from formal attire and looking more toward athleisure, tees were a natural first step. In 2015, the brand set out to raise $5 million in Series A funding, but failed. That’s when Koehn and Allen Ford decided to focus on profitability, moving away from pitching VCs to grow the business. After a 2014 Wall Street Journal article called the brand’s tees one of the best in America, the brand went from doing $4,000 a month in sales to more than $100,000 in just 24 hours. From that point on, the brand started reinvesting money from e-commerce and retail sales back into the business, rather than seek out VC money. Read more at Glossy.