Meet Chelsea Grayson of American Apparel & True Religion in DTLA

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelsea Grayson.

Chelsea, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am a recovering lawyer – I was a lawyer for nearly the first 20 years of my career and was a partner in the M&A practice group at Jones Day. I was recruited to join American Apparel (NYSE MKT: APP) as the General Counsel in 2014 and was soon thereafter given additional business responsibilities and the additional title of Chief Administrative Officer. I was promoted to the CEO spot at American Apparel in 2015 and ultimately successfully sold the company to Gildan Activewear (NYSE: GIL) in 2017. I then joined the boards of directors of True Religion and Delta Dental. In 2018, I was asked to step in as the CEO of True Religion, which I ran for a year before resigning in 2019. I then took two board seats – one with Sugarfina (which we successfully sold) and one with Vireo Health (CSE: VREO) (which I still hold). I also sit on the board of directors with Spark Networks (NYSE: LOV), I am an Executive-in-Residence with Wunderkind (formerly BounceX) and I sit on the Board of Advisors for the UCLA English Department. I also am currently serving as the CEO of Swift Brands, a B2B platform that enables brands to streamline their go-to-market strategies and data science practices.

I have two children, Sylvia (18 years old) and Shane (16 years old) and I am a Los Angeles native and continue to reside here (in Hancock Park).

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There have been bumps in the road, but I’ve generally seized opportunity from each of them. 

I briefly took a detour in my legal career by switching to another firm – the firm was not the right move for me, culturally, but in the interim period when I was transitioning back to Jones Day, I was offered the American Apparel GC position. My vulnerability at that point allowed me to be open to new possibilities in terms of career path, which lead to a completely new career in-house and on the business side of things.

We had to go through a very dramatic and tumultuous Chapter 11 bankruptcy at American Apparel in order to ultimately restructure the company’s debt load and operations to emerge as a healthy going concern.  I later leveraged this high-profile experience to gain board seats and executive positions with other distressed companies, as well as to achieve paid speaking engagements on the topic of crisis management.

Those are just two examples.  No one’s path is glitch-free, but you can monetize those glitches if you see the value in them.

Please tell us about American Apparel & True Religion.
Both American Apparel and True Religion were heritage brands that each still had their halos, when I joined.  But, they each also had brand-related issues.  American Apparel’s brand equity had been degraded a bit, in connection with allegations of sexual and financial misconduct at the top.  We worked hard to regain our customers’ trust and belief in the beautiful calls-to-action that the company had historically stood for, i.e., female empowerment, pro-LGBTQIA support, Made in the USA and immigration reform.  At True Religion, we shifted our marketing content to more appropriately resonate with our customer and we streamlined and improved our performance marketing and e-commerce strategies to better deploy those new marketing assets.  I absolutely adored my customer at both brands, and I was totally absorbed with giving them the best product and brand experience.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
You need to have stellar written and verbal communication skills, and you need to be able to consider all guidance and then be decisive about your direction.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @chelseagrayson

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