Why Trenchies Failed: A Case Study in Dead Marketing

By Jerry Higgs · Published May 19, 2026

Brez Scales and BSM Fredo recently launched Trenchies as their own nootropic candy brand. "Focus-fuelling candy" that "sold out almost immediately after dropping." That was the headline. That's the frame they wanted you to see.

Here's the frame he didn't want you to see:

And now there's a warehouse full of inventory that nobody wants.

But the taste isn't even the real story. The real story is WHY two guys who teach marketing for a living made a series of business decisions that a first-year business student would have caught... Anyone with a brain saw this coming...

The BOF Trap

Fredo built his entire brand on Bottom of Funnel content. For years, that was the playbook: find a trending product, make a review video, collect affiliate commission. It worked. TikTok Shop was printing money for anyone who could point a camera at a product and say "this changed my life." In fact Fredo BSM built his entire business around this model by teaching others how to do it in his Whop course. Trenchies was his chance to show he really does this sh*t.

Then the algorithm changed. TikTok started burying low-effort BOF content. The platform got flooded with AI-generated review slop. Legacy brands pulled back because they didn't want to be associated with the garbage. The entire BOF model collapsed in a matter of months. Now it's a complete wasteland.

The problem was Fredo hadn't done organic product marketing in years. He'd been selling courses about how to do it. Teaching the old playbook. Collecting $997 per student. But he hadn't actually DONE it since the method still worked.

So when he decided to prove he could still play the game, he reached for the only playbook he knew. BOF. Product reviews. Influencer seeding. TikTok Shop distribution. The exact model that just died. Huge WHOOPS in public.

Why Brez Scales chose to go down in flames with him...

This is the part that confuses everyone. Why would Bergen Resnik, a guy making $400K/month selling courses, risk his reputation on a candy brand?

Three reasons. None of them are good.

1. He needed a case study. When you sell a $5,400 course called "Freelance Brand Scaling," people eventually ask: "What brands have YOU scaled?" Brez could only keep the "they're all under NDA" line going for so long. Eventually he needed something to show for his magnificent brand skills. Scaling your own personal brand doesn't instill a lot of confidence in your methods...

Trenchies was supposed to be the proof his method works on a REAL product.

A physical thing you can hold. Something that isn't just him selling himself.

2. He thought his audience was the market. The initial "sold out immediately" moment wasn't product-market fit. It was parasocial purchasing. His followers bought it because HE made it. Not because they needed nootropic candy. The moment it had to survive on its own merits, outside his audience, with real reviews from people who don't care about his YouTube channel, it collapsed.

3. He confused distribution with demand. Having a million followers doesn't mean a million people want your product. It means a million people watch your content. Those are different things. His audience follows him for marketing advice and lifestyle content. They didn't follow him because they were searching for a focus supplement in candy form. 

 He had distribution. He didn't have demand.

The Warehouse Problem

Someone bought a warehouse before validating the product. That's the sequence error that kills physical product businesses.

The correct sequence: validate demand with a small batch. Get strangers (not fans) to try it. Watch their faces. Read the reviews. Iterate until the product earns the purchase. THEN scale inventory. THEN get the warehouse.

The Trenchies sequence: build the product, buy the warehouse, launch to your own audience, get initial "sold out" vanity metric, open TikTok Shop for real customers, get destroyed by honest reviews, lose the TikTok Shop, sit on inventory nobody wants.

That's not a marketing failure. That's a product failure disguised as a marketing failure. And the fact that two guys who TEACH marketing couldn't see it coming tells you everything about the gap between teaching and doing.