On a mission to create a t-shirt that fits right at an accessible price, Ryan together with partners Nick and Matt co-founded True Classic in 2019. Just two years later, True Classic had already hit their $100M mark and by their third year they were going global, making their products available across 192 countries, while introducing new product categories to the business as well.
It was around this time in late 2022 that Adam Eisenstadt was brought in to lead the international business. As the company was scaling up rapidly with new product categories and new geographies, they were also exploring new sales channels with platforms such as Amazon and social media marketplaces. One of Adam’s first steps in this direction was the localization of True Classic’s international website.
We needed someone to run that process of localizing our value proposition. There were translations for different countries, different pricing, promotions, and essentially insight optimization. - Adam, SVP Commercial
While an agency would be handling the nitty gritty of website development, True Classic needed an in-house person to manage the agency and be the point person between multiple internal and external parties.
True Classic was now faced with a decision to make: “How do we fill this role?”
Option 1: Using a software-based solution would be cost-efficient, but the company would still need someone to overlook it.
Option 2: An onshore full-time hire while qualified, comes at a high cost with low flexibility.
Option 3: Contracting talent from an agency meant high flexibility, but the challenge would be finding the right mix of expertise and skill set
By this point, True Classic had been partnering with a few agencies to hire global talent. While some had been shaky experiences, others had been pleasant surprises. This was when Adam and his team decided to give Oceans a try for this role.
We knew we were going to be more confident partnering with expertise through something like Oceans. But if it doesn't kind of work out, there's a bit more flexibility there. It’s a very different challenge to hiring someone internally and 3 months later, it didn’t work out.
Hasitha joined the team at True Classic and managed the digital marketing aspects of the website localization project through its entirety. He came in with almost a decade of experience in Sri Lanka in digital marketing and similar project management.
About a month after Hasitha had joined the team, Adam recognized the quality of talent brought in from Oceans compared to other companies. While each had their pros and cons, the talent depth at Oceans had been very consistent.
So in came Meenu, True Classic’s second hire! With the rapid scaling of their business, the company was now looking at taking on a rather complex project: the opening of 4 new warehouses set in different countries so they could more efficiently ship to customers worldwide. This role brought with it many complexities including tax implications, inventory movement, legalities, supply chain and all requiring stringent coordination with a number of external parties.
Meenu brought with her 9+ years of experience in project coordinating and management across markets such as Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand. Along with her work ethic and performance, she was a cultural fit at True Classic. Once the warehouse project was over, Adam saw fit that Meenu would move on to work on other initiatives at the company.
With the success stories of two hires already in, a reliable relationship had now formed between True Classic and Oceans. It was then an easy decision to make to reach out to Oceans for the third time in 2023 alone.
Mid-2023, True Classic was starting to see a lot of growth in their US business through online channels like TikTok Shop, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram Shop. There was natural, organic growth on these platforms, but no one was looking into it at the time. It was an opportunity that would need its own expertise.
Enter Sanchitha. Sanchitha immediately went on to structure a whole P&L for this uncharted sales channel and highlighted the new and different needs for customer service management.
He came in as a P&L owner, while setting up the operating model for these new sales channels and he’s got that off the ground in a really, really good way!
Sanchitha has now gone on to pivot a bunch of his time into the Amazon US business for True Classic. He’s taken on a general management-heavy role in the company. In addition to the daily operations, he’s been given some responsibilities in strategy as well.
Within the span of a year, True Classic has made 10 hires to its team through Oceans. This openness for global talent came as True Classic’s leadership team recognized early on that talent did not need to be focused in the US or UK alone.
Great talent is global. And even more so, it is more cost-effective, flexible and has allowed them to access a wider pool of skilled individuals.
For True Classic, it was a matter of finding the perfect mix with an offshore talent agency or contractor. While some specialized in offering talent for more menial, basic tasks, others specialized in providing experts from across the world. With Oceans came a variety of deeply experienced candidate profiles, from Executive Assistants to Growth Marketers to Ops Managers, HR professionals and more.
As True Classic continues to grow, the company has developed a sound two-fold strategy to hiring offshore talent based on:
A. Maturity of the opportunity: “Are we 100% certain we need someone in this space?”
B. Seniority of the role
In just the last year we’ve brought in 10 people from Oceans and we've had a fantastic experience, across talent sourcing, onboarding then ongoing support and management as situations change.
One last note from Adam on the secret to True Classic's success:
One third of our team is now offshore. What we wanted (and got) was capable individuals who were smart and motivated but also versatile to apply themselves to the different problems and opportunities that arise in a growing landscape.
We help you plug highly-skilled and vetted global talent into your business, so you can focus on Building Brilliantly.
