Activewear's Next Big Thing

Tyler Haney has a motto: “Doing Things.” And it’s how this runner kept going, despite the setbacks. Her clothing line Outdoor Voices– a line of apparel with an emphasis on a playful, “human, not superhuman” approach to everyday fitness is jockeying for position in what seems like an impossibly tight race of major players in the athleisure space — Nike, Under Armour and Lululemon chief among them. Since launching in January 2013, Outdoor Voices has grown from a collection of five samples and a few bolts of technical fabrics stored under Haney’s bunk bed into a thriving e-commerce business with a brick-and-mortar retail presence in five cities, and a staff of 70-plus people.

All this forward momentum took time to build, and as any runner knows, sustaining the right pace is a matter of heart over lungs, and endurance over speed, especially on an uphill climb. Haney’s past life as a track star hasn’t just fueled the passion she has for her product; it’s shaped the way she leads her company — keeping your stride, anticipating every step, not letting the hurdles trip you up and, most important, not sweating whom you’re up against.

Now, as her company enters a new phase and an ambitious expansion plan, she’ll have to remember those lessons more than ever. Creating a brand is hard; accelerating requires a new set of skills entirely. “Being naive is ultimately helpful when you’re starting a company that you say is going to be the next Nike,” she says.

“I had zero to lose, and that’s what kept me going. I knew nothing about this. I was going to learn everything.” – Tyler Haney, Founder Outdoor Voices

By day, Haney worked at a fashion incubator called Launch Collective; by night, she googled. She researched materials and blends, the science behind them, the factories that made them, the vendors who sold them, the trade shows where those vendors gathered and, ultimately, directions to Utah. In 2013 she persuaded her father to accompany her to the annual Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City. After driving through a hailstorm, shaking dozens of hands and feeling hundreds of swatches from around the world, she knew her obsession was official.

Haney returned to New York and started filling her room with reams of fabric that satisfied three criteria: good with sweat, long-lasting and comfortable in motion. She sketched an initial set of ideas and embarked on a search for local patternmakers to execute her designs. After much trial and error (and some very wonky leggings), she developed five staple pieces that continue to form the basis of what Outdoor Voices calls kits: a compression top, a compression bottom, a jogger pant and two tops. Each item is what Haney considers a “core essential,” and each a vision of chic minimalism that defines the line to this day.

Haney handcrafted dozens of kits for her friends and family. “Take this and go do things,” she instructed and then asked for their unvarnished feedback: Did it look good? Did it fit? How did they feel wearing it? Friends reported feeling more confident in her clothes, less intimidated to work out and, most important, more likely to be active. This reinforced the name she’d dreamed up for her new brand: Outdoor Voices, a playful flip of a childhood directive from her mother to use her “indoor voice.” And her early instructions evolved into a company mantra; the phrase doing things is now embroidered on its ball caps.

Haney’s designs for Outdoor Voices were taking shape, but not without some snags. She set out to hire a lead designer, but her first applicant backed out when she realized Haney wanted to compete directly with the industry’s major players. “I’m like, ‘Come on; don’t you get it?’ And she was like, ‘You’re crazy. You want to go up against Nike and Lululemon? You’re insane.’”

That “no” set Haney off. She quit her job and doubled down. “I thought, Well, if I’m not going to be able to find a designer, I’d better learn how to make patterns and learn more about production.” She found a factory just outside Los Angeles, in El Monte, that could execute the tricky technical stitches her pieces required and would entertain her “tiny orders” of just a few hundred units. By January 2014, Haney had shipped limited orders to a handful of small boutiques. Outdoor Voices was evolving organically, even settling into something of a steady clip.

Then J.Crew buyer called. She had spotted Outdoor Voices pieces in London and wanted product for J.Crew’s “Discover” series of featured brands. Suddenly, Haney found herself on the hook for 11,000 units. She turned to family and friends for help. “I was scraping together pennies,” she says. “I had put all my savings into [the business] to accomplish this first production run. So we scraped together the money, and every single day I was in that factory watching.”

The finished line was on shelves in spring 2014 — the first activewear line ever carried by J.Crew — and it fit snugly into the brand’s cool-classic aesthetic. The kits were hits, flying off shelves online and in select stores. “We were like, ‘OK, we have a real thing,’” Haney says. “‘Let’s go after this.’”

J.Crew had given Outdoor Voices a sizable audience but also left it with a problem. The startup wasn’t connecting directly with the customer; the orders were all going through J.Crew. “After that order shipped, we said, ‘You know what? Let’s put up a site.’ And we started, from a word-of-mouth perspective, just driving people to it: ‘You want the kit? Just go to OutdoorVoices.com.’” She gave her e-commerce strategy the same voice her clothing had: easy, simple, friends bringing along friends.

By October 2014, she’d opened her first retail store in Austin, Texas. A tiny flagship in an 800-square-foot bungalow tucked into a residential neighborhood. Despite all the talk of the death of retail, having a brick-and-mortar presence can create an uplift to online sales, especially when a business is so tactile. What Tyler found interesting is that people liked the kits online but wanted to touch and feel the fabric.  As soon as she opened her store, online [sales] in Austin and then in Texas really took off — the combination of physical and online is much more powerful than just one in isolation.

Move forward to 2017 and Outdoor Voices is set to hit 400 percent growth over last year, with two more stores slated to open on the West Coast this fall. But Haney knows well the importance of properly pacing herself and her company, settling into a groove and finding not just any growth, but the right growth.

“You read about these unicorns,” she says, “and as a competitive person, you think, If I’m not that, I’m not successful, but you have to start thinking about what success actually means. I want the most growth possible, but ultimately the priority is the team’s well-being.”

Tyler has also grown more comfortable distributing her dream through others — delegating responsibility and learning what it takes to lead. There, too, her humane vision for the brand has proved useful. “There are big confidence pits. You screw up, and you have to be transparent about those screw ups,” she says. “Being open and acknowledging when you really sucked at something in front of the staff is humbling, but it also makes you grow.”

She understands, both as an athlete and an entrepreneur, that winning, more than anything, means showing up — even when decisive victory is far from assured.