My name's Philip Lee. I'm the consumer analyst here at William Blair covering Holley. Today we have Matt Stevenson, President and CEO, and CFO Jesse Weaver. Before I kick it over to them, just as an FYI for our full list of disclosures, please visit our website. All right, I will kick it over to them. Thank you, guys.
All right. Thank you, Philip, and good afternoon, everyone. I hope we have plenty of car enthusiasts in the audience today because this is what we do. We do not make cars, but we make them better, faster, louder, and more fun and exciting. As Philip said, the normal disclaimer before we present our materials, and then we will get in a little bit about our market overview. If you are not familiar with the Holley story, we will talk about the size of our market and the general verticals we compete in and how we structure our company. Where we serve the market is around enthusiasts. This is our consumers' customers' pastime. It is their hobby. You can liken it to golfing. You can liken it to fishing or hunting. This is what people do for enjoyment. They love working on their cars.
They love showing them off with their friends, or they like taking them to the track and racing. There are roughly about $70 million enthusiasts in the United States. You can see comparatively to some of the categories like golf and outdoors, it really surpasses the number of people that consider themselves an enthusiast in the automotive sector. Some of the companies that you can compare us to, I think that's one of the more difficult parts in this industry, in this market being public, is who are our direct comparisons? ARB is a close one. They're traded on the Australian Exchange, mostly focused on serving the off-road community of trucks and SUVs. You have Fox. Fox is very different.
They are a diverse company into now sporting goods, but also serving a lion's share of OE shocks for Ford and other companies, which is a very cyclical, different business than us, who is focused solely on the performance auto aftermarket. Over 120 years behind us from the early days of carbureted Model T's and some of the first vehicles all the way through the history and some of the great brands that have become over the years. You can see some brands back in the early 1990s that like NOS, nitrous oxide, that fueled literally the Fast and the Furious craze of Dominic and all those fast cars then, to then becoming truly an aftermarket performance company post-Great Recession. After that, some iconic brands such as MSD, Flowmaster, Simpson, Steelo, others became part of the portfolio.
We became public in 2021 and continued to acquire a number of companies post-going public, and then been really concentrating on developing the infrastructure and professionalization to grow the company to the billion-dollar-plus platform we believe it has the potential to be. How we organize ourselves, this is something that Jesse and I have spent a lot of time on. I should have started with this, but I've been here about two years. Jesse has been here about two and a half. So we're the team that came in after the company went public. What we've been spending a lot of time doing is organizing the company for growth and operational effectiveness. We organize ourselves now around three verticals or, sorry, four verticals, three around the vertical, one around safety and racing. Traditionally, where Holley was focused was a part of the smallest portion of the market.
Domestic muscle, classic cars, modern-day muscle cars, and candidly, there's not a whole lot of those from the American manufacturers. You have the Corvette, you have the Mustang, Challenger, Charger, but it was the smallest segment of the market. Now, where the growth really is around trucks, SUVs, and CUVs. It's a $26 billion space. 80% of the vehicles Americans buy new today are either a truck, CUV, or SUV, and they're the most heavily modified sector of the auto aftermarket. We also have a great Euro & Import business. It's about $14 billion. And then we have our Safety & Racing. This is a global business, about $10 billion, and we have some of the most iconic brands in the space. We not only organize our business around these four verticals, we also organize our brands.
We have 70 brands in our portfolio, but we concentrate our efforts around the lifestyle and power brands. Lifestyle brands, you can actually think of people tattoo these on their body. I'm being real. Holley, Simpson, some of these people are so passionate about that they wear them and live them. We also have power brands that we focus a lot of our energy on that are like the MSD, the Edge, the Flowmaster, the APR, Dining Type. We are contributing tertiary brands that make up the other 50. We are focusing on the brands that offer us the biggest potential to drive the growth that we want. Quickly on Q1, which we reported in the first week of May, it was a bit of an inflection point for the organization. It was the first time we grew the core business year- over- year.
In Q1, we grew the core business 3.3%, including for the first time in five quarters our B2B business. We grew that about 2.5%. We grew over 25 brands. Most of those were our lifestyle and power brands in the quarter year- over- year through both our direct-to-consumer and B2B channels. Also, the growth we drove was in parts of the strategic initiatives that we're focused on as an organization. I'll provide some more transparency of that in a minute. Now, one of the things I'd say we're quite proud of over the last two years while we've had this new leadership team, we've been able to maintain and grow margins by taking a lot of the operational inefficiencies out of the company. When I say that, I don't mean people.
I mean really taking low-hanging fruit, the non-value-added costs out of the business, and being able to put that to the bottom line or reinvest it in some of our growth initiatives. We're also growing our third-party marketplaces business within our D2C significantly. Direct-to-consumer grew over 10%. We're seeing our third-party business on Amazon and some of those platforms up 50%. Product innovation and strategic pricing drove $8.1 million in the quarter, and we're continuing on proactive cost reduction in place to mitigate any tariff impacts as much as possible for future quarters. Just some of the highlights. We talked about net sales. This 3.3% is on the core business, and that is because we divested some businesses year- over- year, and we also discontinued a lot of product lines. That is net on the core, like for like.
You can see the gross margins and adjusted EBITDA margins. Jesse will go into the details of some of the puts and takes behind there. Free cash flow shows negative, but our business had a large portion that showed up in March, which normally would show up in January or February due to weather. We have 30 days' terms with our customers. So a lot of that cash we normally recorded in the first quarter just fell off on timing, which we'll pick back up in the second quarter that we're in now. Have a lot of new products that launched, lifeblood of a consumer products enthusiast company, and some of the operational excellence. We've concentrated on the top 2,500 product in stock rates, which are the majority of our business, up 2%. We reduced past dues 20%.
We continue to gain efficiencies in operations, over $1 million for the quarter, and we continue to get out unproductive inventory. We are really trying to free up cash and take out that inventory where it does not make sense. We talked about our D2C growth. Continue to execute on our promotional periods, our marketing calendar. We were up on our key IRS sale 27% year- over- year. We have a massive social media following. We have 8 million followers across our brands and our various platforms, which is quite amazing for the size of our company and our brands, is how engaged consumers are with our organization. When we look at our verticals, we are starting to break this now out so we can be more transparent to where we are focusing our efforts and then the results of that.
Domestic muscle, which is, again, where the lion's share of Holley's focus was in the past, we grew that portfolio about 3%. Those brands there pictured grew about 11%. Truck and off-road, we were up 2%, but some of those brands there were up over 30%. Euro and import, that portfolio roughly grew about 17%, and in safety and racing, we were up 3% year- over year, with Stilo nearly being up double digits. Again, it's showing that focusing our resources and our accountability is really moving the power brands in a market that we consider to be flat or down. Our industry does not have great indexes. We track the sellout data closely, not only for, of course, our D2C business, but our major customers, and we're gaining share, but ultimately, the market has been soft the last three years.
Provided this framework a couple of earnings calls ago about the key areas of our strategic plan for the next three years. First and foremost, we make Holley a great place to work, and we have a number of initiatives every day that go into place to make that happen. Premier Consumer Journey is about really meeting the consumer where they want to be met and our direct-to-consumer experience. Trailblazing Trusted Partners, our goal is to become the best partner in our industry in the B2B space. Product innovation and portfolio management is, of course, around new products, but managing the elasticity of our products around our portfolio management, ensuring that we not only have the right price points for the value proposition we present to consumers, but also ensure distributors can be profitable selling our products.
They're a key component of our go-to-market strategy, and we've done a lot of work there to make sure all products are competitive. Global expansion in new markets. We're expanding in new markets, new chemical categories. We're also expanding new countries. Mexico, we haven't been present in and recently launched into Mexico and are expanding in just naturally adjacent markets to the U.S., and eventually, we'll look to other export markets in the future. Transformational M&A is something, as the company has dramatically improved its professionalizations, its capabilities, its processes. We're now looking at where and when does M&A make sense and what are some of the quality assets out there that may be of interest to us. Fund the growth is around operational improvements and continuing to bootstrap our investments through our own productivity, and then, of course, delivering results that our shareholders expect.
These were some of the numbers from the first quarter. B2B delivered $2.5 million year- over- year by partnering with our national retailers as well as our top 50 accounts. We also launched a new initiative focused on small customers, which is starting to bear a lot of fruit. Our D2C business we talked about was up quite a bit for a number of reasons, and yielded $3.3 million. Product innovation and portfolio management added another $8 million. We are just beginning some of the expansion around the dealer channel chemicals Mexico, which added about $300,000 in the quarter. Continued with the operational improvements that added just over $3 million, and we improved our Great Place to Work score up to 60%.
To qualify to get the Great Place to Work designation, you have to be at 65, and it's something we want to nail down in our long-term plan. It doesn't happen overnight, but it's important to who we want to be as an organization. Okay, I'm going to turn it over to Jesse, going a little more detail.
Okay, so I know we have another 15 minutes, but I'll probably get through this much more quickly than that, and we can get upstairs, do more breakout Q&A. But I'm Jesse Weaver. As Matt pointed out, I've been here two and a half years, and one of the first things that we focused on were the financial priorities, which I'll get down to what they are here today. But coming into the company, what I saw was a storied brand. As Matt pointed out, 120 years Holley has been around.
I think one of the facts that we talk about internally is it's one of, I'm going to say, three to six, whatever myth you want to believe, businesses that was on the first Model T that's still around today. These brands actually have a lot of staying power. Through that time, obviously putting together the portfolios as it stands today, really focusing on the consumer in ways that enhance their life, their lifestyle. When I came into the business, you had a situation where inventory was going up, past dues were going up, revenue was coming down, but you had such great brands that this business definitely had an opportunity to turn things around. One of the first things we had to focus on was free cash flow.
Immediately, the team jumped on this, and this was one of the best teams I've ever worked with and for as everyone got all in on getting working capital straight. In that first year, we generated $80 million in free cash flow while coming off of a year really of being just flat. We have continued this discipline as an organization to focus on cost to serve, which was the initiative Matt put in place. Over the last two and a half years, we have cut out over $30 million of operational inefficiency through a combination of improved efficiency in our freight, improved efficiency in operations, and we are not stopping that. Coming into this year, on the left side of the page, you can see we even put another target out there of another $5-$10 million this year.
This is really just in the operational efficiency side where through a combination of what we're doing in our manufacturing facilities, getting the teams to find better, smarter, faster ways of doing the production and the distribution, what we're doing through just management of our returns and allowances. We have a lot of distribution partners that we need to have policies in place and hold those teams accountable to what they return. On our warranty side, one of the areas that we focused on as a team is just getting quality in check. Making sure that we are managing the quality in a way that certainly our consumers have a better experience, but we also have less cost.
Throughout the business, as we've encountered, I think anyone here heard of tariffs, we've immediately doubled down on making sure the spend throughout the organization is actually perfected in a way that we can manage through this uncertain time. This year, just continuing on our $30 million-plus trajectory, we're going after another $5 million-$10 million. Q1 was annualized this to $4 million, but a lot of the initiatives in place will be coming through towards the back half of the year. We're on a really good trajectory there. The other place that Matt had pointed out we really focus on is making sure the right products are going to market and getting our working capital to a place that actually is even more efficient than we've already made it.
I mean, I think one of the big opportunities that the team had when Matt joined was making sure we're making products that people want to buy and not overinvesting in inventory. One of the topics that we've talked a lot about is through that process improvement, we get to a place to where we're not saddled with inventory that hangs around for many years. We cut out 45% of our SKUs pretty early on. We had 70,000 SKUs when I started. Today, we have just over 35,000, and that only accounted for 3% of sales. There was a big inventory improvement there.
As we move ahead into the future, it's just getting ahead, not just looking at what's happened, but looking at what's to come when it comes to inventory that we may be starting to lean out on and making sure that we have got process and promotions or programs in place to get that inventory moving again. The team is organizationally, I would say we're, I'm looking at our stock price today at $2, and I looked at our stock price when I started, we were $2. I think we were $2.15, and then when my appointment was announced, we dropped to $2. I don't know what that means, but we are in a much stronger place because at that point, there was no path to cutting $30 million in operational inefficiency.
We were about to breach our covenants, and we structured a great deal with the banks, which were great partners. We have exited that. We have improved operational efficiency. The team that we have in place looks meaningfully different than the team that we had in place before. I think, as you can see here, we are continuing to do what we need to do to protect the balance sheet. When you look at the guide for the year, this was our original guide for the full year, and then at the end of Q1, we just reiterated our guidance, no change. The caveat here would just be that we were still, at the time of the call in early May, digesting what was going on with tariffs.
I think to think that we've fully eaten the elephant in any of this would probably be naive because even within a week of that call, the picture changed. Excluding any of those impacts, largely, I would say on the consumer end, what happens in the back half, we still feel like we've got a path to around $120 million-$121 million at the midpoint on the EBITDA.
I think following this down through, for those of you who are really focused on the free cash flow, when you take this into account, this would say the company should produce around $40-$50 million of free cash flow, which is a really good return on a per-share basis relative to what we're trading at today and puts us in a great position to do what I think a lot of investors say they are looking for in our stock in this time, which is to deliver. If we do $40-$50 million in free cash flow this year and the next year, we should see a path towards the low threes on leverage. As we've demonstrated a willingness to do in the absence of incredible acquisitions that fit strategically and make financial sense, we will prepay the debt.
Since I've been here in September of 2023, since that time, we've prepaid $75 million. I think we are on a really good path. We've got a great story. It's a tough story to tell in this market with so much uncertainty. When you look at the overall investment thesis of Holley, there's lots more we could go into as it relates to the enthusiast, but the enthusiast spends differently, and they are very passionate. Just to put a finer point on that, as Matt pointed out, we have $8 million social followers, 110,000 people come every year or more to our Holley-owned events. One of those that, for those of you who are interested in learning more, we'd recommend you come to is our Holley LS East event, which will be in September. We'd be happy to host you for dinner.
We're talking about what this could look like. There you'll see over 45,000-50,000 people there of all walks of life really engaged and excited about the brands and what we're doing. The industry is huge, over around $40 billion plus if you include the safety international components of it. It's been a pretty consistent grower up until the time of COVID and then sort of what we've seen over the last couple of years. This is a lifestyle that these enthusiasts really live into day in and day out. When you look at the brands that we have, brands matter, particularly in this category. If anyone in here ever worked on a car, I can raise my hand now because I have, but prior to this job, I had not. It is a challenge, and a lot of people are up for that challenge.
I needed help, but it took a lot of time. The one thing you wanted to make sure of when you were done is that the car started. The last thing you'd want to do is to put on a part with a brand you don't recognize that you're not sure of. These brands and these margins, which are about 40% gross margin, demonstrate the power of what these brands can do and how iconic they are. The organization, as Matt pointed out, has been grown over a series of acquisitions over a decade at this point. I think we are structured today better than ever to actually know what strategically fits, where it fits in, and how we can extract value from those acquisitions in a very meaningful way, particularly with the team that we have in place.
On the digital and D2C side, we did not speak as much to our distribution channels, but one of the things to keep in mind is the company made an investment pre-COVID in direct-to-consumer at that time. D2C was about 15% of sales. Today, we are in the 20-25%. This platform makes for a great opportunity for us to complement our B2B business. We have continued to see actually really good partnership with our B2B partners, which creates a real opportunity for us as we acquire companies to get them to market and to get full value out of what they do. The last couple of things just here, as you think about the financial business, the algorithm here. On an organic basis, we would expect to do mid-single digits through a combination of price and volume split about 50/50.
As I pointed out, we've consistently been in a margin or plus. As we've done operational efficiencies, we've been holding close to the 20% EBITDA, even in spite of the revenue, the top line over the past couple of years being challenged. Lastly, free cash flow. Cash, as we all know in this room, is king, and we've demonstrated an ability to continue to generate that even in this past couple of years. I think with that, we ended six and a half minutes early. Can take a question or two. Philip, would you recommend that we move to the other room? Move to the other room. Okay.
We'll switch over to, I believe it's Burnham B for Q&A, but we'll do a few questions here, and I'll start. Just your question on tariffs right now, how you're thinking about it.
I know we have a little bit more information now, still very uncertain, but maybe any color on your sourcing, domestic manufacturing presence versus international, and then just how you think about any mitigation efforts weighed between either pricing or OpEx or vendor negotiations, how you think about balancing all of those.
Yeah, sure, Philip. So obviously, we get that question a lot over the last month or so. The majority of our cost of goods sold are in the U.S., right? That is sourcing, manufacturing, assembly, what have you. We do have exposure in Asia and other countries around the world. I'd encourage you to look at our earnings material from our May 8th call, I think it was, that goes into real detail of how we're handling it as a team. We have a structured project management office.
We call them 11 tiger teams that work on 11 product categories that are focusing on 80/20, the high movers, where they're subject to, I'd say, moderate tariff exposure. Now, back in the first week of May, that was quite significant. It went from kind of minor to kind of really, really high and has come back down. For us, we're finding a lot of opportunities just to get better in our purchasing, our supplier consolidation. I'd say we're using it as never let a good crisis go to waste. Even though the tariffs have come down significantly, we're finding opportunities to mitigate some of the existing tariffs that were on the products and some of the countries we source, consolidate suppliers to get better volume-based pricing and in some senses get less capital on the water, so to speak.
I think the team has done an amazing job over the last six weeks. We get report outs every day on our progress in mitigating the tariffs. At the same time, we did take some moderate pricing action comparatively to our competitors. We did roughly about 8.75% across the portfolio. Many of our competitors did 10%, 20%, 30% plus because of their much higher exposure to some of these affected countries. Some think we have the ability to pick up share in categories. We'll see how that pans out. I think between our approach, our pricing, and the tenacity of the team to mitigate the tariffs on some affected products, I think we feel we're definitely in better shape than most for what's on the horizon. Again, it's a fluid situation, but I think we're starting to see it calm down.
During our August call, we will provide more specific transparency on what we think the tariff impact will be, if any, outside of what we cannot recover in pricing. We are proud of what the team's doing.
Does anyone else have a question they want to ask right now?
Structural growth. The structural growth, and particularly the enthusiast market, what does that look like over time? Is there any consequence to the digitization of automobiles and kind of how you think about people working on their own cars?