Happy Thursday!

In 5 minutes, you'll be learning about the following:

1. ⚡ ​How This T-Shirt Brand Turned $100K a Day in Ads Into $250M
2. 👔 ​ Ralph Lauren Just Reimagined Personal Shopping With AI
3. 🍌 Google Just Dropped “Nano Banana” - The AI Editor Everyone’s Talking About
4. 🚿 Neat Build in Public Update: ​Would You Shower in Your Shirt?
5. 🔥 How a BBQ Rib Idea Exploded Into $250K/Month on Shopify [Podcast]

Jim Huffman, GrowthHit & Neat Apparel CEO
​(Want a friend? Let's connect on Twitter or LinkedIn)

​Ralph Lauren Just Launched an AI Stylist​

The fashion giant is betting that “Ask Ralph” will change how customers shop forever.

Ralph Lauren is taking a bold swing into the future with the launch of Ask Ralph, an AI stylist built into its U.S. app. It can recommend outfits, answer fashion questions, and essentially act like a digital personal shopper.

What’s wild is that it’s trained on decades of Ralph Lauren’s archives and lookbooks, so when you ask it what to wear to a fall wedding or if white after Labor Day is OK, you’re getting answers grounded in the actual DNA of the brand.

Now, Ralph Lauren has always been early when it comes to digital moves. Back in 2000, they were one of the first luxury brands to sell online—at a time when most people were scared to even type their credit card into a website. Since then, they’ve dabbled with smart shirts and holographic runway shows. And with this move into AI, they’re once again showing that being early matters—even if it’s messy at first.

Here’s the takeaway: you don’t have to be a billion-dollar fashion house to learn from this. Every brand - whether you sell apparel, services, or software—has the opportunity to use AI to create experiences that feel personal and human at scale. It won’t be perfect right away, but the companies that start experimenting now are the ones who will actually figure out how to build deeper customer connections while everyone else waits on the sidelines.

So ask yourself: what would “Ask [Your Brand]” look like?

​Meet Nano Banana: Google’s Weirdly Named AI Image Editor That’s Actually Really Good​

It’s fast, practical, and could finally be the image tool that actually earns a spot in your daily workflow.

There’s no shortage of AI image editors right now - Canva has one, Adobe has one, and a dozen startups promise they’ll change the way we edit photos.

So when I first heard about something called Nano Banana, I rolled my eyes. But here’s the twist: it’s not another random AI app - it’s Google’s latest model for image editing, tucked inside their Gemini platform, and it’s been getting a lot of attention since its quiet release this summer.

What makes it interesting isn’t that it can remove backgrounds or swap a t-shirt for a blazer (every AI tool claims that). It’s how fast and consistent it is. You type in what you want changed, and instead of breaking the photo or warping the face, it actually respects the details.

In our tests, you can edit multiple photos at once and the style stays consistent - something that’s been a nightmare with other tools. Think campaign product shots or a batch of social posts all getting the same treatment in seconds.

To me, the big shift here is less about the features and more about the workflow. We’ve all seen “AI magic” that looks great in demos but falls apart in real life. Nano Banana feels closer to something you’d actually use daily. It’s fast enough to replace small design tasks and accurate enough that you don’t need ten retries to get something usable. That makes it different.

The takeaway? This isn’t the first AI editor and it won’t be the last, but it’s one of the first that feels practical. If you’re a founder, marketer, or creator, this could be the tool that helps you crank out more polished visuals without waiting on a designer. For us, we’re using it for ad mockups, quick product tweaks, and even testing creative variations before handing them off to design. It’s not replacing talent—it’s removing the bottlenecks.

🚿 Would You Shower in Your Shirt?​

​

Why we put our product through the weirdest stress test yet

This week at Neat™, we launched what might be our strangest campaign so far: The Shower Test 🚿.

Now, to be clear, we don’t think people should shower in their shirts. But here’s the deal: we’re not just selling shirts. We’re selling freedom from one of the most embarrassing daily problems - sweat stains.

So we decided to make that invisible problem visible.

Here’s the playbook:

• 🚿 Heighten the problem. Kevin literally filmed himself taking a full shower in our shirt. (Not a glamorous set - just his bathroom.)
• 🚿 Show the solution. The shirt stays dry. No pit stains. No awkward blotches. Just clean.
• 🚿 Keep it scrappy. Zero production budget. No influencers. No studio. Just raw proof.

And now it’s live.

Will it resonate? Will it convert? Or will people just think we’re insane? Honestly, I don’t know yet.

But that’s the fun (and the risk) of building in public. You put an idea into the world, you test it, and you let the market tell you if you’re a genius or an idiot.

This isn’t about selling shirts. It’s about selling confidence. And if filming a shower in your bathroom gets that across - well, then maybe crazy is exactly what works.

(And hey, if you’re running ads for your own brand and need a team that’s willing to test the wild ideas? GrowthHit might be able to help.)

​How This T-Shirt Brand Turned $100K a Day in Ads Into $250M​

True Classic cracked the code on Meta ads and their funnel is the real lesson.

True Classic is one of those brands that makes you pause. They launched in 2019 with a simple product - better-fitting men’s t-shirts - and in just four years, they’ve scaled to a $250M company. That’s not supposed to happen in today’s DTC landscape, where ad costs are climbing and most brands are struggling to break even. So how did they do it?

Here’s the wild part: their CEO says the secret is their Facebook ad funnel. They spend $100,000 every single day on Meta, and for every dollar they put in, they get $2–$2.50 back. That’s not just good - it’s almost unheard of at that scale.

But the magic isn’t some targeting hack or algorithm trick. It’s the way they use creative as the targeting. Instead of over-engineering audience segments (age, gender, interests), they run broad campaigns and let the ads themselves filter people in. Each creative speaks directly to a pain point or desire - whether it’s comfort, fit, confidence, or value. By testing hundreds of these variations, the right messages naturally find the right people.

And once you click, the funnel keeps doing the work. Instead of fancy microsites, True Classic leans into category pages as landing pages. At the top, they hammer home the key benefits.

Right below that? Bundles - engineered to drive up average order value. Product pages aren’t an afterthought either. They treat them like mini landing pages, loaded with short videos, social proof, and urgency to push the shopper over the line.

Even checkout is optimized. They gamify the upsell process so that the more you spend, the more you unlock. It feels less like a sales push and more like a reward system, which nudges people to add just one more item to the cart.

So what’s the lesson here? You don’t need to copy True Classic’s exact playbook, but you can learn from the mindset. They didn’t win by obsessing over targeting hacks or over-complicating the funnel. They won by knowing their customer so well that every ad, every page, and every upsell feels tailored to that person. Whether you sell apparel, software, or services, that’s the real growth tactic: go broad, speak directly to pain points, and make buying stupidly easy.

​From $10 to $1,000 a Day on Meta Ads Without Burning Cash : Our Most Watched Growth School Class Ever​

The proven framework that’s helped brands turn small budgets into big growth - step by step.

Scaling Meta ads feels like one of those high-stakes casino games. Do you double down and hope it works? Or do you play it safe and miss out on growth? For a lot of founders, it’s the scariest part of marketing - because turning up the ad budget can just as easily drain your cash as it can grow your business.

That’s exactly why one of our most popular Growth School sessions was a masterclass on how to confidently scale Meta ads from $10 a day to $1,000 a day. I brought on Jordan Summers, our Director of Growth at GrowthHit, to break it all down. And here’s what people loved about it: it wasn’t theory, it was a blueprint.

Jordan showed how to squeeze more out of your current audience before chasing new ones, how to test creative that speaks to different segments, and how to gradually ramp budgets without tanking performance. It’s the kind of stuff you only learn after managing millions in ad spend.

The big lesson? Scaling isn’t about gambling - it’s about discipline. When you pair the right creative with the right pacing, you don’t just spend more money -you build a machine that turns ad dollars into predictable growth.

This session has been rewatched more than almost anything we’ve done, and for good reason. If you’ve ever wondered how to take your ads from “just running” to truly driving growth, this is the playbook.

👉 Watch the full session on demand​

​From Idea to $250k/Month Selling BBQ Ribs on Shopify​

What if you could turn BBQ ribs into a $250K/month Shopify business? That’s exactly what Andrew Buehler did and it started with crowdfunding, cold emails, and serious sales hustle.

Jim sits down with Andrew Buehler to unpack one of the most unexpected eCommerce growth stories out there how he launched a premium BBQ brand and scaled it to $250K+ per month without outside investors.

Andrew shares his step-by-step process for using crowdfunding to launch, how he activated his network to get early traction, and the exact sales skills that helped him scale. It’s scrappy, smart, and full of lessons for any founder.

Key Topics Covered:

• How to successfully launch with crowdfunding
• Why activating your personal network is the ultimate unfair advantage
• What actually matters when you’re launching on Shopify
• Cold email and sales tactics that drive real customer acquisition
• Design insights that helped build brand credibility fast
• Why resilience is more important than funding

If you’re looking for a launch playbook rooted in hustle - this episode delivers the goods (literally and figuratively)..

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts

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​Let’s Fix What’s Blocking Your Growth​

• My Agency - GrowthHit​
• AI Growth Strategies to Sell More On Shopify - GrowthSchool​
• The Sold-Out Shopify Playbook - Get the product​
• Podcast - The Shopify Growth Show​
• Proven AI Prompts for Your Shopify Success - Get the library​
• My Book: The Growth Marketer's Playbook​

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