When the men’s socks and underwear brand Pair of Thieves launched 10 years ago, it took a different approach from many of its contemporaries. Though established during the DTC boom, Pair of Thieves was always meant to be a wholesale-focused business supplemented with DTC sales.
Ten years in, Pair of Thieves does over $100 million in revenue and has a presence in over 4,000 Walmart stores and all of Target’s nearly 2,000 stores. Its wholesale revenue makes up about 80% of the business, and it has never taken any outside investment. Young brands often find themselves overwhelmed by the demands of working with large wholesalers, but Pair of Thieves cofounders Alan Stuart and Cash Warren said they’ve managed to maintain their brand’s identity and profits while working with some of the biggest apparel wholesalers.
“We knew we were starting with wholesale and DTC together, and we built our margins to accommodate that,” Stuart said. “A lot of brands start with DTC and then when they go into retail later, they either have to cut the quality of the product or cut the margins they’re making on it, and neither is very easy or sustainable to do.”
For brands, Warren echoed advice that other executives have shared in Glossy stories: Remember that everything is negotiable.
“It’s to everyone’s benefit if [the brand and retailer] plan together,” Warren said. “You ask, ‘Where do we want this brand and this line to be in two years?’ And you try to build toward a collaborative relationship.”
“[Unsold] inventory can really kill a brand,” Stuart said. “But you can set your own parameters. As a young brand, you don’t realize you can do that. You just do what’s asked of you. But if they ask you for something and you can’t make it happen, there’s a way to say, ‘Hey, we can’t deliver that, but what about this?’ And you offer them something else that you can do.”
For example, Pair of Thieves’ early days were focused on just 16 SKUs in a single category, socks, and a handful of retail doors. The brand slowly scaled up in both production and revenue to accommodate the larger orders from early retail partners like Target. It waited until relatively recently in its life to start expanding into more exclusive and premium product lines. Pair of Thieves launched a premium product line at a higher price point dubbed Thieves Gold with Fred Segal in 2019. It has doubled the number of Walmart stores it sells in over the last year. Since 2019, the company’s team has increased in size by 150%, and its annual revenue has grown by 225%. It has expanded from socks to underwear, loungewear and shirts.
But Warren cautioned another risk of brands who are juggling wholesale and DTC.
“As your retail distribution expands, you have to remember the purpose of your own sales channels,” Warren said. “Because if everything is sold at Target or through Amazon, then you end up competing against your own DTC channels. You’re buying the same keywords, you’re competing for the same customers.”
The brand’s solution has been to offer exclusive products at select retail partners. Different collections may only be available at Target or Dick’s Sporting Goods for one season then spread to all of Pair of Thieves’ retail partners and direct channels a season later. That way, during the crucial launch period, there’s no overlap between channels. Another strategy has been using the brand’s e-commerce site as a testing ground. Exclusively through its online store, Pair of Thieves has released products in small batches to test demand for new materials and categories before introducing them to wholesale partners if successful.
The strategy of divvying up products between wholesale and direct channels has become increasingly common among brands. Melanie Travis, founder of Andie Swim, told Glossy that even though Nordstrom is her biggest retail partner, only a fraction of Andie’s total product catalog makes its way to Nordstrom shelves.
“We do lots of exclusive inventory that you can only get from us directly,” she said. “We make sure that our channel is the only place you can get everything. Maybe 10% of our inventory is available outside of our channels.”
One thing Pair of Thieves isn’t doing: its own stores. While its DTC channel remains a small but vital part of the business, it will remain an online-only channel, Stuart and Warren said.
