Challenge

True Classic Tees, a fast-growing menswear brand known for its flattering fit and everyday basics, approached the affiliate channel with a clear vision: they wanted more than just incremental sales. They wanted strategic scale. At launch, the brand outlined four key priorities:

• Drive brand awareness through meaningful publisher placements thatintroduced the brand to new audiences.

• Incentivize new-to-file customers to support broader customer acquisition goals.

• Position affiliate as a discovery channel, leveraging content, commerce, and loyalty partners to influence shoppers earlier in the funnel.

• Maintain a high return on ad spend (ROAS) by balancing upper-funnel exposure with conversion-driven activations.

The challenge was building a full-funnel program that could hit all of these goals in tandem—driving reach and awareness, while staying lean and performance-focused. With no preexisting affiliate infrastructure, the brand needed to recruit, onboard, and activate a diverse mix of partners across multiple verticals, all while ensuring efficiency and attribution integrity across direct-to-consumer (DTC) and Amazon affiliate channels.

Results

With Ikon Digital Media at the helm, True Classic Tees transformed its affiliate program into a high-performing, full-funnel growth engine that delivered measurable impact across every brand objective. From the start, Ikon focused on building a channel that scaled efficiently while aligning with True Classic’s goals of amplifying awareness, acquiring new-to-file customers, and driving a consistently strong ROAS. Through strategic partner diversification, the team secured premium placements with editorial giants like Buzzfeed and Esquire, while activating loyalty drivers such as Klarna and Affirm to capture value-conscious shoppers. Ikon also launched and managed True Classic’s Amazon affiliate program, which quickly became a core revenue contributor. By blending deep affiliate expertise with a performance-driven strategy, Ikon evolved affiliate from a supporting tactic into one of the brand’s most effective acquisition and discovery channels.

Growth Summary

In just nine months, True Classic’s affiliate program—spanning both Direct-to-Consumer and Amazon channels—surpassed seven figures in total revenue, showcasing the efficiency and strategic execution of Ikon Digital Media’s approach. With zero preexisting infrastructure, the DTC affiliate program alone exceeded $100K in a single month while maintaining an exceptional 819% ROAS. On Amazon, the program achieved an average monthly revenue growth of 68%, with peak performance hitting a 206% revenue increase. Order and click volume grew consistently alongside revenue, averaging 71% and 200% MoM growth, respectively. With combined QoQ metrics all above 100%, Ikon drove sustainable performance across acquisition, awareness, and revenue—firmly positioning affiliate as a major growth engine for True Classic.