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Well howdy guys so a super super late upload but i just saw something that caught my attention that my wife actually brought to my attention that i could well i shouldn’t say i couldn’t believe it i kind of saw this coming for a while but it caught my attention and somehow i missed it through the cracks today and it’s true religion is now filing for bankruptcy well
Filing for bankruptcy protection i should say now why does this even matter to me as companies going bankrupt all the time right true religion used to be one of my biggest investments some years back and i was invested in this one around 2012 2013 what i loved about it was the brand i loved how it was made in usa i loved how they had a ridiculous balance sheet like
No debt in like two hundred and twenty million dollars in cash and this was a company i had a market cap of like six hundred million so you do the math on that you’re only really paying about 350 400 million dollars for the actual business they were very profitable very profitable company i loved all that and toward the end of my investment in them i start to see
A lot of things i did not like now lucky enough the company was bought out for the very end of my investment i was only up a few percent before the buyout the buyout happened and i got a very nice egg that i mean i don’t know how much i made it probably made five or six thousand dollars which at that time was definitely a lot of money so it was definitely a very
Good thing for me and looks look at some things our guys so obviously the company was found in 2002 it grew popular it capitalized on the whole expensive jeans thing right there revenue when i owned it was four hundred ninety million dollars in the buyout happened toward the end of 2013 to go private they get the buyout happened for about eight hundred and thirty
Five million now mind you the company had over two hundred million dollars in cash so really they’ve come the tower tower brook capital they really only paid like six hundred million net net you could really say and this past year guys this past shows blows my mind true religion lost had a net loss of seventy eight point five million dollars on three hundred sixty
Nine million dollars in revenue so basically the company you know as just hunt on the pit i mean they were making tens of millions of dollars in profit when i own the company and now they just freakin lost 79 million dollars last year like that a whole different company and literally what three or four years and it was funny i was reading into the reports on like
Why they said they’re filing for you know bankruptcy protection and they’re like oh it’s because like things are being sold more online no it’s complete bs this company just became a company that was toward the very end of my investment i already saw this and then it just got worse and worse and i kind of followed the company here and there because it was one of my
Biggest investments at one time right so i just kind of like kept an eye on it and they screwed up so many things first off the ceo i think his name was jeffrey lubell back then he’s also the one that founded the company right he had the whole vision for the company and he solely kind of wanted to get out of the company like he was kind of like he already made so
Much money and he kind of i could just tell he didn’t really have the passion he once had for and you know wall street bearing down on him and all that i don’t think he was a type of person that really wanted to deal with that so he kind of wanted a way out and the whole buyout happened and that made sense now what did they do wrong with this brand i mean this was
A brand that was so hot you know celebrities were wearing i mean anybody you know serena williams was going to shop there you know anybody that was anybody you know and in hollywood was buying true religion like that was the thing right this company screw-ups in so many ways one of the main ways true religion screwed up was they went away from branding they went
Away from the whole horseshoe true religion branded and they started making clothes that weren’t even like true religion branded like it didn’t even say true religion on it that’s like the stupidest thing you can do you’re a premium brand you charge super expensive prices for your shirts for your pants you know anything you sell they’re super expensive like one of
The most expensive places you can buy jeans at right you’re your pain you want the brand name to like if your luxury brand a lot of times it’s about not just the quality but mainly the fact that it shows whatever it is like louis vuitton one thing that makes jewelry vuitton great is all those little lvs on it right now you know if somebody’s walking around with
A louis vuitton bag they probably paid a thousand bucks for it they probably got money right same thing is somebody driving a ferrari you know they probably got a lot of you know the you know buy these things luxury brands same thing from somebody owns a rolex why are they we’re all x well because it’s brand name you know that person’s got money right but that’s
Not the that’s not the only thing the other thing is this was a company that was made in america as in their pants were made in america like all their clothing was made in america and that made the company special that made you know things special all this is made in america this isn’t some million china product it’s good quality it’s made in america well what i
Noticed was especially toward the end of my investment more and more clothes that were coming in were made in china were made in china and it was like wait this isn’t made in america this is made in china but they were still trying to get premium products for things that were made in china so the company got very greedy there and i think geoffrey bluebell i think
He just kind of got pushed out away there and and his focus back then was like made in america product and then also it was starting to infiltration of made in china stuff it was like the the store started getting filled with more made in china stuff than made in america but yet they were still trying to charge the same prices as the made in america stuff like i
Would go there and look at shirts and whatnot sometimes i would buy shirts and whatnot sometimes they even wear them for videos i still love some of those shirts they’re so comfortable and whatnot love the look at them and i would look at shirts and it would be hard to find a made in america shirt it would be made in china made in china i would look at jeans some
Of the jeans and some of the pants were starting to be made in china i was like what what is going on here like like they’ve totally lost what makes true religion true religion it’s a premium brand and it’s made in america and so they throw away both of the things that made the brand the true religion branding the horseshoe like all that all the styles that were
That were in right they threw away all that and then they throw away the made in america and it was like dude like you just threw away the two things that make your brand special like you just you just toss them away guys so it doesn’t come as a super surprise to me that this company is now filing for bankruptcy protection it’s kind of like i mean it’s kind of sad
To see one of my old investments go that route but at the same time you know the private equity fund they just had no clue what they were doing there i mean they just totally no vision at all and sometimes the private equity company as you know the funds there’s have so much money they just go out and buy stuff right they just go out and buy stuff oh oh wrong we
Paid six hundred million for true religion we can do something off of that you know and sometimes they have just no clue at all what they’re doing and this is obviously okay so anyway let me know what you guys think about this whole story and whatnot and if you know of any other brands that you’re thinking man this brand might go that route someday or whatnot they
Could just they hit their peak in 2012 and from there just got ugly and dang 79 million dollar loss last year that’s just mind-blowing so anyways that’s about it guys you know what have a great day
Transcribed from video
OMG! True Religion Files for Bankruptcy Protection! Old Investment of Mine By Financial Education