Solo Brands
- 🦄Became a unicorn2021
- 📈Peak valuation$1.2 Billion ’21
- 💔Became a Unitard2022
- 💸Last valuation~$5.26M
The rise & fall
8 moments · 2011–2025The key moments.
How it happened
Solo Brands rose on the viral success of the Solo Stove — a smokeless backyard fire pit — and rolled up other direct-to-consumer brands like Chubbies and Oru Kayak before going public on the NYSE in October 2021 at about a $1.2B valuation.
Demand for its pandemic-era products faded fast, a celebrity-fronted marketing push flopped, sales and margins shrank, and the company took a $358M goodwill writedown. After warning of substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern, the stock collapsed roughly 99% and was delisted from the NYSE in 2025, leaving it an OTC micro-cap.
Glassdoor reviews grew more negative over time, with reviewers citing leadership churn and long hours as the DTC group struggled.
Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.
Source: Fortune / Retail Brew / PitchBook (~$1.2B IPO valuation Oct 2021 on NYSE as DTC; ~99% decline; going-concern warning; delisted to OTC as SBDS, 2025; ~$11M market cap by 2026)
Founders & leadership
- John MerrisPresident & CEO who took Solo Brands public in 2021 (peak); departed Jan 2024
- Spencer Janco-founder of Solo Stove (found the manufacturer from Shanghai while his brother ran logistics from a Dallas garage)
Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-21. See our methodology.
Disclosed investors (1)
Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.
* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-23 · Methodology · Leaderboard
