Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney returns as CEO five years after ouster, integrates TYB loyalty platform at launch

That's what it's all about. That's the American dream right there. Have a good one. Good stuff, Ryan. Great. We'll talk to you later. Uh Dan Primac has a report says Flexport sells Convoy assets to DAT for $250 million.

So, while plenty of people can't comment on it, uh Dan Primac has the scoop and we will as he often does. We have Ty Haney in the reream waiting room. Let's bring her in. How you doing, Tom? Speaking of comeback stories, what's happening? Welcome to the stream. Good to meet you. How you doing? Yes, I'm doing great.

I'm actually reading a tweet from Emily Sunberg. I know she's one of your best friends. Mine, too. We are good friends. Amazing. Are you in New York? I'm in SF. Okay, cool. Uh, give us Yeah. Where? Yeah.

So, SF, where uh I mean, I want to get into everything, but uh where is that where you're going to be basing the the company out of going forward? How how are you how are you thinking about that? Uh PYB my rewards platform. We actually work out of the X Twitter office on Market Street. Cool.

So it's Wait, the X like the X office? The X office? The former office X office or the current X office? The the last X office, former Twitter office. There's like old Twitter merch uh which we should probably put places, sell places, and then there's some X branding. And then now there's QIB. So cool.

It's worth we will market by all the old Twitter merch. Yes. Yes. I saw there was like a huge bird sculpture that was going up when Elon first bought it. He was thinking about auctioning this stuff off and it was like $60,000 for this massive bird logo. Like I don't want this bird logo anymore.

There's a bunch of whatever you got. Well, congratulations. Why don't you give some quick quick background on yourself for the few people that might be living under a rock that do not know and then we'll get into the the news from this week. Yeah, I'll give you the quick walk up.

I started a company in the active horse space called Outdoor Voices at 23 out of school in New York City. It really became a darling in the direct direct to consumer world. I ran it for eight years to 100 million. I left five years ago.

Uh there was kind of an ego battle at the board level and then between me as the CEO and this person. Um I left uh and that was a sad point of time. Um 90% of my experience building that company was awesome, 10% was hard. That said it was a masterclass in learnings.

Anyway, since then I started a tech platform, a community rewards platform called Try Your Best. We work with the top consumer brands to essentially create a more fun and effective loyalty program. All that to say, I announced yesterday that I rejoined my original company, Outdoor Voices. Um amazing.

And so pretty cool to see there was a very warm response to original OG OVers and here I am. I'm I'm running TYB and I'm running OV as well. Amazing. The the the video was amazing. Uh maybe we'll play it after you jump off, but uh my wife said she almost teared up watching it.

It just was like it's such a such a cool story and uh yeah, I think everybody's excited to have you back in the driver's seat. So what is that what is that going to look like going forward?

How are you going to like what what what what do you think uh what do you think the takeaways from the last go are and how are you kind of what you know where do you want to take the brand going forward?

Is it back to back to its roots back to what you know people loved originally more retail or e-commerce shifting the mix? I'd be interested to hear about that. Sorry, can you say that again? I I'd be interested to hear about the the the a lot of brands uh you know they they start online then they go offline.

There's owned retail, there's channel partners. Uh, how do you see that mix changing going forward? How did it change while you were there or over the last decade? Yeah, 100%. The northstar vision for OB is to build the number one recreation brand.

Uh, our call to action or kind of motto that people have a crazy emotional connection to is doing things. You guys might have seen the Doing Things hats like trotting trotting around the west westside highway.

Um, that was kind of like a souvenir from the brand that people would wear, but you could only get them by participating with the brand. All that to say, like we started in 2013, so we were very much part of this direct to consumer model that I'd say in a lot of ways has not proved to be all that successful.

Um, and so similar to others, we were able to raise a lot of capital. That meant I was diluted pretty significantly as the founder. Um, and ultimately we spent too much money trying to acquire people, you know, online that were expensive and didn't last.

Y we also kind of had this grassroots um what would I call it like community uh of 10,000 or so or so people that were really our super fans and as we clicked into the data like anyone who came through this community activation was ultimately four times more valuable over time and so that's essentially what prompted me to start TYB to allow brands to directly connect with their super fans and grow their value over time own that relationship own that data um and then now with OV me it's been cool.

I've been working on it for a year. Um Oh wow. I I rejoined obviously as the founder as an owner with new owners um and a partner, but the last year has been just almost like a cherry on top. It's been a creative outlet.

I obviously spent eight years like obsessing over every detail of OV um to to kind of like play again in this space and think about from a product perspective like the recreational lifestyle and what the core products are here. It's just honestly been fun.

Um, and so no change in terms of the vision, but we're off to the races. I feel like there's such an opportunity for almost like a turnaround fund, venture capital fund, private equity fund to specifically target uh companies that where the founders left and we're going to set them up to bring them back.

I think that there's so much more value unlocked from that as opposed to just like, okay, let's trade this asset to someone who's going to squeeze even like the last few pennies out, just kind of wind it down and bleed it out as opposed to let's there's actually something here, but we need a founder back in the back in the seat and we need to bring them back and set them up.

The cool thing too is is it seems like every apparel brand that went ultraheavy into online only, not online only, but made that the priority struggled all the way from like Nike, you see their their like DTOC efforts.

They basically capitulated there and realized like, okay, people like going to stores, like they like experiencing person, they want to be on all these different channels. And so I think it was just a massive lesson for everyone in the industry.

I'm curious how you see the like kind of broader athleisure category evolving.

It feels like there's kind of distinct categories around Nike is still for athletes, but Nike kind of missed your insight with OV was like, okay, what is like active wear for people that don't consider them like don't aspire to be a professional basketball player or people that aren't like weight training.

Uh, and then we've seen, you know, the rise of aloe targeting kind of the, uh, Pilates industrial complex, um, and kind of the lifestyle around that. So, I'm curious kind of where you see kind of the broader market going. I'm curious, what do you guys wear active wear wise? I wear cotton. Yeah.

Like I wear like cotton like tank tops and and shorts. I I actually don't know. John doesn't know. John's one of the John's in the category. My wife shops for me. So yeah, John, she's like, I think I need new shorts. And then shorts appear from his lovely wife.

But I back in the day, I I would wear I remember I was the first person in my friend group in college to discover outdoor voices. I was early to Lululemon at a time when, you know, men were just criticized for wearing uh what people saw as like a women's brand, and I was like, "The product's just great. Try it.

" And then people would try it, and it was great. And then I got on OV. Okay. Um, and uh, but but yeah, I think uh, yeah, for me I I think I'm excited about like the return of like like natural fibers in in sportsware. Yeah, I'm excited about that. But, uh, it's it's a broad category.

Yeah, I I asked that because for this fiveyear gap, like similarly, I would only wear vintage. I feel like every brand every brand in the active space says so much about you. like Alo wasn't for me, etc.

So, uh I also think of this space almost like the like artist space where there's like different flavors of pop stars and each of them have like equal amounts of fandom or or cultiness and they all can coexist.

One thing I'm excited to kind of really blast away from is just this oversaturation of like compression top and bottom and that like being the look.

So, our collection launches next week and like we've really infused more styling options and to your point like that includes like cotton popppllin striped button-downs that you wear to like protect from the sun and like put over your Pilates pants or cool uh cotton cotton cashmere cropped cardigans.

Similarly, like I'm going to the grocery store in that. Uh yeah, I think it's like time to infuse more style beyond just like stretchy, you know, bottoms and tops. So that's that's certainly what you'll see from us starting next week.

How are you integrating uh TYB uh I'm assuming that's going to be a big part of the launch. It launched today. So OV's community launched on TYB today uh in a very full circle moment. We're off to the races there. Our designers are in there.

We're essentially like getting all of this amazing feedback in terms of what people have missed from a product standpoint, what hero products they want to bring back. Like it's shocking to me how much people care about out their voices 5 years later.

Like holy [ __ ] But but uh OB is like perfectly suited for this toolkit now. It's a tool that I wish I had as a brand builder 5 years ago. How do you uh does uh what what comes to mind uh when you hear the phrase grow at all growth at all costs?

It feels like one of the challenges with building an enduring lifestyle brand, apparel brand, whatever you want to call it, is is the DTOC era was like, "Okay, here's $50 million. Turn this into as much revenue as you can as fast as possible.

" And when you look at the great brands throughout history, very few of them had founders that were that that where growth at all costs was like, "We know it's a marathon. We know it's a marathon, but what if it was a sprint? " Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

But it's like how it's more like, you know, I I can see the path to outdoor voices getting to a billion dollars in revenue in in 10 years, but if you tried to get there in three years, like it probably make the job a lot harder. Yeah. Becoming takes time. Yeah. You'd have to have too many shortcuts. Totally. 100%.

I mean, for me, like success looks like longevity, and I've felt that like pain of not having longevity here firsthand. So if you think of obviously like Patagonia and Ivon Chinard like I met with him somewhat recently and like that's the model for success.

I think I think in terms of this like lifestyle like physical product brand at the same time like I went from software with a W to software W in terms of my businesses.

So I understand how tech companies like deserve the capital and require the speed just by nature of they don't have physical products or widgets that they're trying to you know get right from a planning perspective and then sell like so it just makes a lot more sense to me why funding around software companies like is the way it is and the speed that's required and then possible there I've very much just felt firsthand.

So, I'd say like winning to me, yeah, is around longevity, endurance, and no pun intended, it's an active word brand. Can you take me on a tour of some of the good community, maybe good and less good community building stuff.

We were talking about this uh Emily Sunberg highlighted a candle company that put a bunch of influencers on a private jet and the private jet maybe didn't even take off.

And uh and it feels like that is a unique unexplored space of like take the super fans, whether they're influencers or not, and just do something way above and beyond for them. Even Red Bull went back and did this with like the supercross community.

It was just a bunch of guys driving motorcycles on dirt ramps and they were like, "Let's turn this into a real sport. " That sport came back to, you know, love them forever. They did this with F1. There's companies that have done this really well, but then it can go less well.

So, like I I understand that like, you know, surveys are valuable, but like what how else can you integrate uh or or activate a community?

what I'm like what we're seeing really matter on the user side is status and identity as essentially like signaling my proof of fan and like so giving people the ability to level up and like prove their fandom and then have something like as a bragging right that they can share on social around that is ultimately like what they care about beyond anything.

Um, and so like that proof of fan idea, I think like loyalty becomes kind of the new identity or status and like your ability to to signal that like really matters. Um, what else would I tell you there? Wait, so the proof of fan, does that need to be like qualitative or quantitative?

Because there's a world where it's like, uh, okay, like you're in like the Kohl's cash world where like you buy $1,000 and you get 50 bucks back versus this like more qualitative world where it's like, look, you came to some event and you bought some stuff and like you were, you know, in you were we saw you in our replies on social a lot and like we didn't really try and put like a send five tweets and you get a free hat, but like how how quantified does it need to be?

because I feel like it can feel a little sterile if it becomes an algorithm and then people are gaming and then you have bots getting the hats and then reselling them and stuff. How do you think about that? I think it's it's definitely all about social.

So like within my profile I'm essentially collecting things from, you know, events I've gone to. So Rare Beauty is a good example. They do. They're they're excellent at essentially like creating these little collectibles or souvenirs that that their fans can collect as they launch new product or host an event.

And essentially what 2IB allows you to do is like build your consumer profile, but it's very visual first. And so you're earning these things that then essentially are like your top shelf. Like here's what I'm obsessed with. I've bought it seven times. Here's a Selena Gomez event I went to.

It sits next to kind of, you know, my streaks or for lack of a better term in terms of uh product purchases. And all of this like essentially builds your identity in a really social first way.

Um and so we see people share like this wallet or pro profile content just reflecting kind of their engagement with brands in a run really fun kind of like social gameled way.

The other thing just to your guys's point I think there is certainly like oversaturation of brand events is like the way I think about building fandom it's kind of four-part like one articulate the purpose or mission very clearly of the brand like why do people care what's the reason for being two build rituals for activation and obviously we're seeing like run clubs take off but like the key for me there is like something that you as a brand can do consistently not just one and done.

Yeah. The third is connection. And so like allowing brands to like or bands that like obsess over Nike or whatever to connect with one one another and like that flywheel of engagement really takes off. And then the fourth is incentivization.

And I think for too long fandoms been like clicking like on Instagram but like ultimately that's not giving me anything for my loyalty over time. So there's a lot to play with as you think of kind of like the combo of those things. But I agree like brand events there's too many like I don't care. Yeah, makes sense.

What's the How are you thinking about product release schedules coming back to OV? You've been working on this first collection sounds like for a year, but are you thinking drops, collections, capsules, a mix of everything? It's just a consistent drum beat of of excellent newness.

And I think we've always like done a good job of having a kind of stunty or unexpected perspective on in the space. And so we have a another collection dropping uh in September that's like a very specific activity like not going to be relatable to all but like something you certainly haven't seen Nike do before.

And I remember like early innings outdoor voices uh on our site we merchandised by a category of dog walking. Sounds simple, no non-issue, but like Reddit went nuts. They were so mad like dog walking is not a sport and that was perfect. I'm like that's so it's so ownable.

Dog walking is how dare you make a pocket for get in the Olympics. I want to see Olympic level dog walking for sure. For sure. That sounds amazing. Thank you so much for stopping by. We got to jump. Super excited to see you. Congratulations. We got to ring the gong for a founder back in the seat. Founder mode.

Founder mode. Did you have the sound? Founder mode. Thank you so much for hopping on. We'll talk to you soon. Great to see you. Cheers. I'm excited for Outdoor Voices. Maybe they'll do a billboard. Maybe they'll get on adqu. com. Out of home advertising made easy and measurable.

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