Outdoor Voices: Tyler Haney

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2019

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2013, Tyler Haney was a 24-year-old graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York. One day on a jog, she realized that her workout outfits looked, and felt, like they were made for competitive athletes. Tyler envisioned a brand of athletic wear for more everyday activities, like walking the dog or hiking with friends. She launched Outdoor Voices and she got her two-piece "kit" — a crop top and leggings – into a few specialty boutiques. Soon afterward, her brand made it into J. Crew stores and took off. Today, Outdoor Voices has raised close to $60 million from investors and has around 350 employees. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," after a lunch with some new moms turned into baby bedlam, Beth Fynbo created Busy Baby Mat — a placemat that would securely stick on any table, keep toys off the floor, and provide a fun surface for babies to eat and draw. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	I created a list of 25 VCs, and I started emailing.
0:36.0	I would say probably 19 got back to me.
0:39.0	And out of those 19 when you start to go meet with them, did any of them say, this is awesome, I'm in.
0:45.0	Oh no, every single one of those first meetings were like, love that you had the courage to get in here, but this needs work.
0:58.0	From NPR, it's how I built this.
1:00.0	A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and stories behind the movements they built.
1:08.0	I'm Guy Raaz, and on today's show, how a former high school track star took inspiration from a casual jog and built outdoor voices, a brand of athletic wear for people who are necessarily athletes.
1:23.0	So think for a moment about energy bars.
1:32.0	When Gary Erickson introduced Cliff bars to the world in the early 1990s, energy bars weren't as common as they are today.
1:40.0	Even in the early 2000s, when Laura American launched Laura bars, there was plenty of room to stand out.
1:47.0	But by the time Peter Ray Hall debuted RX bars in 2013, there were literally hundreds of different energy bars to choose from.
1:55.0	And trying to differentiate his bar from the thousands of other brands out there would require a different approach.
2:02.0	So Peter focused at least initially on the CrossFit community, a relatively niche audience.
2:09.0	It was a side door entry into what appeared to be an impenetrable category, but it worked, and eventually those loyal crossfitters helped turn RX bars into a major energy bar brand.
2:22.0	This is more or less the playbook that Tyler Haney used to launch outdoor voices.
2:27.0	By the time she decided to debut her athletic apparel brand in 2013, lots of people were telling her that the market was saturated.
	...

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