27-Year-Old Grows DTC Business From $60,000 to Over $500,000

Ruth Sack, 27, grew up with Streets Ahead, the luxury leather accessories brand her father, David Sack, founded in 1982. She and her siblings painted belts with nail polish in the Los Angeles factory and attended trade shows across the country with their parents.

^{Image Credit: Courtesy of Streets Ahead. Ruth Sack.}

But it wasn’t until 2020 that Sack considered dedicating significant time to the brand. “I went to UCLA and studied gender studies, and then Covid hit,” Sack says. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I started helping out with the family business because things were pretty tough, and I actually sort of loved it.”

Sack went on to attend the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) and step in as Streets Ahead’s head of marketing and design.

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Streets Ahead’s products are made locally in California with leather and hardware sourced from Italy, and the brand is known for its novelty pieces —  ”bestselling belts [with] crazy heart hardware with chains and snakes and things like that” — that have been spotted on numerous celebrities, including Beyoncé during her Cowboy Carter tour.

^{Image Credit: Courtesy of Streets Ahead}

The brand built on its success as a legacy wholesale business over the decades, but when Sack joined the team, she wanted to explore its potential in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) space.

As it turns out, there was a lot: In just a few years, Sack grew DTC revenue from $60,000 to more than $500,000. Streets Ahead is projected to hit $3.2 million to $3.5 million in total revenue in 2025, with $2.7 million to $3 million from wholesale and $500,000 to $600,000 from DTC.

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“I came in and changed the platform to Shopify, kind of just revamped the whole thing.”

Streets Ahead’s foray into DTC sales started with a website refresh.

“We always had a website, but [no one ran it],” Sack says. “It didn’t really make any money. It was never up to date. So I came in and changed the platform to Shopify, kind of just revamped the whole thing, and started adding products and keeping it up to date. And immediately we saw a difference.”

Once her parents saw the results, they were even more willing to invest in the brand’s DTC strategy. Streets Ahead leaned into professional content creation and advertising and continued to see its DTC sales grow.

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Part of the brand’s digital transformation also included a logo overhaul, Sack says.

The company featured the new design across its social media platforms and started to generate interest from major influencers like Rocky Barnes, who boasts more than three million followers on Instagram and 200,000 followers on TikTok.

“ She found us through an ad that we were running, and she wanted the exact belts from the ad,” Sack recalls. “So we started doing some gifting, and we could see that it worked. As we built our social presence, especially Instagram and ads, we got so many DMs, and now they keep coming.”

^{Image Credit: Courtesy of Streets Ahead}

“99% of the time we’re making it from scratch.”

Sack would love to sell more on TikTok, but the platform’s quick-ship requirements prove challenging for the made-to-order brand, as “everything is essentially custom” and takes time to manufacture.

Whereas other companies might have thousands of units sitting in a warehouse ready to ship, every time Streets Ahead receives an order, that request is sent down to the factory, which starts the production process.  

“We don’t have anything made here unless there was a return and we have [that returned product],” Sack says. “99% of the time we’re making it from scratch.”

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Because of Streets Ahead’s branding and social media presence, it can get “a little bit lost” on people that each item really is custom-made for them, Sack notes. The company follows up on particularly large orders to confirm them before moving forward with fulfillment.

What’s more, despite the business’s made-to-order model, Streets Ahead does accept returns.

“ I buy things that I want to try and might return — we all do it,” Sack says. “If we want to have this type of direct-to-consumer [platform], there has to be some kind of return. People need to try things on. They don’t know their size. So we do allow returns, [but] we’ve now started to put a little tag on

that says, If this tag is removed, we can’t accept the return, to prevent people from wearing it and then sending it back.”

“You have to be okay doing the grunt work.”

As Sack considers Street Ahead’s future and her own role within it, she’s excited to expand the brand’s offerings beyond belts. The brand dropped its first handbag collection last month, and Sack says she’d love to branch into shoes, particularly leather boots and sandals with hardware, down the line.

^{Image Credit: Courtesy of Streets Ahead}

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For young professionals or aspiring entrepreneurs who hope to make their mark on the fashion industry, Sack says it’s important to “learn a little bit of everything” — and be prepared to do your part.

“You have to be okay doing the grunt work,” Sack says. “There are some days I’m down shipping, some days I’m cleaning buckles, things that someone as a designer or creative director doesn’t necessarily want to do. But you need to be a team player and be willing to know every single role.”