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True Religion, the 23-year-old urban casual lifestyle apparel brand, has maintained relevance by strategically balancing heritage with innovation and leveraging cultural connections, while expanding to new audiences.

"We looked at this timeline between 2002 and today, and there were persistent hits throughout music, sports, culture more broadly, of people talking about us, wearing us," said Kristen D'Arcy, CMO at True Religion, on a recent episode of "Reimagining Retail." "And I think what's so interesting is that momentum just has continued to build, particularly as we've improved product both in men's and women's over the last couple of years."

Here's how True Religion continues to build a loyal following.

Loyalty through product consistency and innovation

True Religion's product strategy revolves around a careful balance between familiar favorites and trend-responsive innovation.

The brand maintains customer loyalty through consistent fit profiles that customers return to repeatedly—styles like "The Becca" or "The Ricky" that serve as anchors in their product lineup. "There's a suite of product offerings that you know you love and come back for," D'Arcy noted.

Simultaneously, the company employs what they call a "chase program" to respond quickly to emerging trends. This approach allows them to test new styles in their direct-to-consumer (D2C) channels before potentially expanding successful items across their 50+ US stores and ecommerce platform. D'Arcy said this responsiveness helps them stay relevant while maintaining their core identity.

"The chase program means that we are looking at trends that are happening right now in the market," she said. "So, baggy, for example, is a big trend in men's clothing. We test that in our own D2C channels, see if customers are biting, both new and returning customers and then if they are, we roll out that chase program even more fully to all of our stores."

Building community through digital engagement

True Religion has invested heavily in digital community-building strategies to foster deeper customer relationships.

• Their loyalty program, True Rewards, has attracted nearly one million members and offers exclusive access to product drops and experiences that align with the brand's cultural positioning, such as opportunities to attend events like Coachella.
• Their "Team True" influencer program includes approximately 100 creators ranging from college athletes to fashion stylists, with follower counts spanning from 20,000 to 5 million.

D'Arcy said that this approach of connecting culture with community has led to continued success for the brand.

"We are up double digits this year, which is phenomenal, given it's a really tough retail market out there," said D'Arcy. "These partnerships with the right faces at the right time definitely correlate to not only interest, but traffic and sales for us."

Balancing brand building with performance marketing

True Religion maintains a multi-layered marketing approach that D'Arcy credits with balancing brand building with performance metrics.

While performance marketing drives immediate sales, D'Arcy emphasized the importance of not "performance marketing a brand to death." Their strategy includes significant investment in upper-funnel marketing through streaming video, streaming audio, and other brand-building channels.

This balanced approach has yielded measurable benefits across their marketing funnel, with valuable channels in paid search, organic search, and elsewhere.

"All of those pop as traffic sources and sales sources when we have the investment in upper-funnel," said D'Arcy. "We are properly activating the campaigns at every layer of the consumer's journey, the upper funnel, the mid, consideration, and then the lower funnel, and they all work together well."

Listen to the full podcast episode.

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