Ugh, as if.
The PE death march - day 1.
S1 filings are not everyone’s Sunday evening reading. But they are interesting. The last one I really invested in was Allbirds - at that point, pre COVID, they had a pretty Utopian view of what a DTC brand profile looks like. Repeat customers were bringing strong second year revenue with multiple purchases per year. They shipped internationally and had a strong brand identity. But there were cracks - Supply chain nouse and analytical core were not there. Reformation is a darling brand for many. It is talked about in eComm circles in ALOT of corners of the earth. They are building their S1 filing, it is not complete but it is public.
There is a sentence in Reformation’s S-1, a legal document, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on the 25th of June, the kind of paperwork that usually reads like it was drafted by a fax machine having a panic attack, that describes the company’s in-store tech as “basically the Clueless closet in real life.” That’s not me reaching for a hook. That’s the filing. Reformation went public this month, ticker REF, and the most striking thing in 200-odd pages of risk factors and tariff disclosures is that they could not, even for the SEC, stop sounding like an Instagram caption. “Hi. We’re Reformation.” “Thanks ladies.” The whole document opens its eyes, looks at the regulator, and says as if.
