Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney returns as CEO five years after ouster, integrates TYB loyalty platform at launch
Jul 29, 2025 with Ty Haney
Key Points
- Ty Haney returns as CEO of Outdoor Voices five years after a board-level ouster, rejoining with new ownership and launching the brand's community on her TYB loyalty platform simultaneously.
- Outdoor Voices burned through capital acquiring low-retention customers at scale, while a grassroots base of 10,000 super fans proved four times more valuable, a gap that inspired TYB's social-identity loyalty model.
- The relaunch moves away from compression-focused activewear toward everyday pieces like cotton poplin shirts and cashmere cardigans, targeting a decade-long path to $1 billion rather than compressed growth timelines.
Summary
Ty Haney has returned as CEO of Outdoor Voices, the activewear brand she founded in 2013 and ran for eight years before being pushed out in 2020 following what she describes as a board-level power struggle. She rejoined as an owner alongside new investors, and has been working on the comeback quietly for roughly a year before the public announcement.
The return is not a clean separation of roles. Haney simultaneously runs TYB (Try Your Best), a community loyalty platform she built after leaving Outdoor Voices, and has integrated it directly into the OV relaunch. The OV community went live on TYB the same day as this interview, giving the brand a ready-made infrastructure for super-fan engagement from day one.
The DTC Reckoning
Haney is candid about what went wrong the first time. Outdoor Voices scaled to $100 million in revenue but burned through capital acquiring customers through paid digital channels who proved expensive and low-retention. A grassroots community of roughly 10,000 super fans, by contrast, generated customers who were four times more valuable over time. That data gap is the founding insight behind TYB.
She frames the broader DTC era as a structural failure for physical product brands, pointing to Nike's retreat from its direct-to-consumer push as industry-wide confirmation. The model of deploying large venture rounds to accelerate revenue at the expense of brand equity is now viewed as a category-wide miscalculation.
Product Direction
The first collection under Haney's return launches next week, with a second collection planned for September tied to a specific, undisclosed activity category. The design direction moves away from the compression-focused aesthetic that has saturated the market, adding cotton poplin striped button-downs, cotton-cashmere cropped cardigans, and styling options suited for everyday wear beyond gym use. Haney cites Patagonia and Yvon Chouinard as the long-term brand model, emphasizing longevity over growth velocity.
She declined to chase a fast revenue target, noting that a path to $1 billion in revenue over 10 years is visible, but that compressing that timeline to three years would require shortcuts that would undermine the brand.
TYB's Loyalty Model
TYB's approach to fan engagement centers on visual, social-first identity rather than transactional points programs. Users build profiles that display collectibles earned through purchases, event attendance, and brand interactions, functioning as a public display of brand loyalty. Rare Beauty is cited as a strong executional example, issuing digital collectibles tied to product launches and events.
Haney outlines a four-part framework for building brand fandom: clear mission articulation, consistent activation rituals (run clubs are cited as a current example), fan-to-fan connection, and tangible incentivization. She argues that passive engagement, liking posts on Instagram, has delivered no durable loyalty value to brands or consumers.