Stance | Case Study

CASE STUDIES:

Stance’s founders saw a category that had been ignored, taken for granted, and dismissed – socks. By breathing life into something that had been overlooked, Stance has ignited a movement of art and self-expression that has drawn athletes, performers, and iconic cultural influencers to the brand – a group called the Punks & Poets. By underpinning its creative roots with a relentless focus on technical innovation, Stance is now found in over 40 countries on those who dare to be different.

Industries

Branded action sports and consumer apparel products.

Challenge

Engage a strategic financial partner to provide strategic guidance, secure working capital and equity financing, and to assist with tactical financial solutions.

Amplēo

Helped set up the initial accounting procedures and financial reporting, helped secure working capital and equity financing, and recruit key accounting and finance hires as they were needed. With a strong internal finance team and the Amplēo partner as their CFO, Stance avoided having to hire a full-time CFO until the time was right.

Continued Success

As Stance executes on its expansion initiatives and continues its rapid growth, it has established itself as the premier, global sock brand. Winning the NBA on-court sock contract and the grand opening of its flagship retail store in New York City in 2015 have established Stance as a significant and influential player in the action sports and fashion industries after just five years in business!

CHALLENGE

1. Stance made a commitment to its business by recruiting a team of talented individuals and industry veterans combined with committed investors who were willing to help fund the startup. This group recognized early the need to have timely and accurate information about the business so that they could plan and manage growth with confidence. While they knew that they needed additional financial expertise, they did not want to use their cash to hire a full-time CFO before they really needed one.

2. As soon as Stance started shipping product, the challenges of consistently outperforming their sales forecasts became apparent. The meteoric growth meant the Company would need more cash than expected to fund inventory purchases and customer accounts receivable.

3. Rapid growth also brought the need to better manage inventory purchases and distribution through demand planning and effective supply chain management.

SOLUTION

1. Secure sources of working capital and control credit & collections risk.

2. Develop meaningful GAAP financials to satisfy reporting requirements.

3. Create company analytics (KPI’s) and accumulate industry benchmarking information to provide real-time information to management through an integrated, company-wide dashboard of metrics.

4. Build out a Finance team for scale.

The Stance senior team tagged one of Amplēo’s partners with whom they had a long-standing relationship to be their outsourced, part-time, strategic financial partner. He supervised the Company’s accountant and developed procedures, appropriate controls, and a financial reporting deck to help the team manage cash, inventory and receivables. In addition, the CFO worked with John Wilson, Stance’s President, to secure a factoring line of credit with Wells Fargo Capital This provided not only much-needed working capital, but also credit reviews and underwriting of Stance’s customers to help mitigate collection risk.

As Stance experienced rapid growth, Amplēo helped the company recruit and train a full-time Controller and a Director of Operational & Business Intelligence with deep industry experience. The Stance finance team quickly: 1) organized an accounting team and completed financial audits with minimal adjustments; 2) improved controls over and management of demand planning and the supply chain to assure that the company optimized its production and shipment of product based on predicted consumer demand; and 3) implemented a new industry-specific ERP system and integrated Domo dashboards to report company metrics in real-time across the different departments and business units.

The Company’s success and international recognition provided opportunities to expand distribution (open Stance retail stores), grow the product (the introduction of the performance socks lines and underwear) and to improve its products through continued innovations (the addition of Stance Labs for research and development). These opportunities required more financial resources than the company could generate from operations given its continued growth, so the Amplēo team helped Stance raise over $75M in equity capital in two financing rounds to finance these strategic initiatives at shareholder-friendly valuations and with terms.