Transcript
Chris (0:00)
Tai Haney is back at Outdoor Voices, relaunching the activewear brand with a confident, bold and sexy look. According to Glossy Tai Haney is officially back at Outdoor Voices after a four year absence, bringing a fresh, confident, bold and sexy vision to the activewear brand she originally founded in 2013. Consumer brand investment firm Consortium Brand Partners acquired outdoor voices in June 2024 and specifically wanted Heney to return as founder, partner and co co owner to lead the brand's revival. The relaunch kicked off with dramatic social media fanfare as Outdoor Voices wiped its Instagram grid clean and followed just one person, Haney herself. The first product drops will be a limited edition diamante adorned sweatshirt reading Doing Things. Yeah, aren't we all? The brand is positioning itself as the quote, uniform for doing things, expanding beyond pure athletic functionality, and the design philosophy now embraces what Haney calls an intersection between designer and activewear with elevated details typically reserved for high end fashion. And Tai Haney coming back to Outdoor Voices sounds a little Messiah ish to me if I got to be honest. But this is also our Put you on the spot question, our A and M Put yout on the Spot Question of the week. So here it is. Bringing back Haney as the OG Outdoor Voice in quotes could reignite the brand's magic and thinking about whether this will work for the brand. When is a founder still the right leader years into a brand's journey? And how do you know when it's time to hand the reins to new leadership as Outdoor Voices may have done prematurely?
Unnamed Analyst (1:35)
Oh, I mean, wouldn't we all be wealthy if we knew exactly when the right time was to get rid of the founder and bring in some new leadership. I mean, I think that Outdoor Voices, I think missed out. I think as as A and M suggest, Outdoor Voices released Ty Haney prematurely as a brand that is, you know, originally direct to consumer and is really based on the influence of one person being Ty herself. I think that the future of Outdoor Voices and whether or not this will be successful really depends on who the demo is that's going to latch onto this brand. I mean, if it's millennials from their early days in 2020 when they were, you know, really thriving as a brand, maybe this is enough to get them to come back, but I worry about whether or not that's going to be enough to sustain the brand. Because I think if you look at this younger demographic, you look at, you know, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, I don't know that Ty Haney means anything to them. I don't know that her coming back is really going to, to bring the following that Outdoor Voices saw in previous years. So I mean, to answer A&M's question, I think know it was not the time to release her. They were still doing well. They probably should have managed this better from who's doing the merchandising, who's in charge of the store launch plans and store openings and that kind of thing versus, you know, versus putting, putting her in charge of that. And her real talent is leading the concepting, the design, the, you know, the, the social commerce element of this, as she's done clearly with her other two brands that she's also still a part of Jog, the energy drink and her loyalty business that she spun up. So I think she's a really smart individual. They let her go too soon. Can she bring awareness back to this brand in a very crowded athleisure space? Verdict still out for me. But what about you? What do you think? I mean, do you think that you can, you know, when is it time to let go of the founder, Chris?