From 2022
Former North Dallas High School basketball coach and Athletic Director Carlton Dixon launched custom-suit maker Reveal Suits in 2016 with the idea of stitching a little something special inside the jackets of college athletes. A year later, he inked licensing agreements with Baylor University and Florida State, then began a national expansion.
Today, with 87 university license deals in hand—including the Big 12 Conference, the Ivy League, and the NFL Alumni Association—Reveal Suits has cornered the market on custom-designed suits with linings emblazoned with the colors and logos of teams across the country.
Just as things were really taking off for the company, though, COVID created a whole new set of problems. With sporting and in-person events on hold, demand took a nosedive, Dixon says. Orders from a few universities that opted to buy suits for their graduating athletes were enough to keep the company afloat, but the entrepreneur knew his team would need to innovate if it wanted to stay in business—let alone grow. After all, how do you measure for a bespoke suit if people are reluctant to get close to a stranger or travel for a fitting?
“We figured out how to conduct a virtual fitting,” Dixon says. “We had no problem doing a fitting with a client in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, wherever.”
Now that pandemic restrictions have eased, Reveal Suits has returned to in-person fittings, even holding group events for teams, organizations, fraternities, and the like. Dixon, a Dallas native who played basketball for The University of Texas, says the next half-decade will focus on pursuing professional sports teams and collaborations with big-name athletic lines like Nike or Adidas. More recently, he tapped into the high school market, outfitting the Hillcrest High School basketball team and the state champion South Oak Cliff football team.
But Dixon has in mind a much larger prize. Ralph Lauren has had a lock on the U.S. Olympic team’s apparel since 2008, but Reveal Suits is not backing down from taking that torch from the fashion giant. “It won’t happen for Paris [in 2024],” Dixon says. “But keep an eye out for 2028. All those things are in the plan.”
