Who Owns Torrid?

Torrid opened its first store in 2001 at the Brea Mall in California, the brainchild of Hot Topic executives who noticed that plus-size customers, a majority of American women, had almost no fashion-forward mall options. The concept worked immediately: licensed pop-culture graphics and trend-driven apparel in sizes 10 to 30 filled a gap the mainstream industry ignored.

Under Hot Topic ownership through the 2000s, Torrid grew into a national chain of several hundred stores. The 2013 Sycamore Partners acquisition of Hot Topic Inc. moved Torrid to private equity ownership, and Sycamore made the counterintuitive decision to invest in the smaller brand. Stores were remodeled, intimates and activewear lines expanded, and e-commerce was rebuilt.

The July 2021 IPO priced at $21 per share and initially traded well above that, but the timing coincided with the end of pandemic stimulus-era spending. Sales cooled through 2022 and 2023, and the stock spent long stretches far below its IPO price. Lisa Harper, former CEO of Hot Topic and Belk executive, took over as CEO in 2023 and launched a turnaround built on three platforms: channel, product, and pricing.

Fiscal 2025, ended January 31, 2026, was the reset year. Torrid closed 151 structurally unproductive stores, roughly a quarter of the fleet, ending the year with 483 locations. It launched five internal sub-brands targeting distinct customer segments, which generated about $70 million in first-year sales, and it paused the footwear category for most of the year while re-sourcing production after U.S. tariff changes added roughly $50 million in costs. Net sales fell 9.4 percent to $1.0 billion, Adjusted EBITDA came in at $63.6 million, and the company posted a $7 million net loss while guiding for margin recovery in fiscal 2026.