Outdoor Voices: Tyler Haney

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  I created a list of 25 VCs. And I started emailing, I would say probably 19 got back to me.

• 0:12Guy Raz?

  And out of those 19, when you started to go meet with them, did any of them say, "This is awesome. I'm in."

• 0:18Speaker 00

  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."

• 0:31Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 0:44Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, 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 aren't necessarily athletes.

• 1:02Guy Raz?

  So think for a moment about energy bars. When Gary Erickson introduced Cliff Bars to the world in the early 1990s, energy bars weren't as common as they are today. Even in the early 2000s, when La American launched LaRabars, there was plenty of room to stand out. But by the time Peter Rahal debuted RX Bars in 2013, there were literally hundreds of different energy bars to choose from. And trying to differentiate his bar from the thousands of other brands out there would require a different approach. So Peter focused, at least initially, on the CrossFit community, a relatively niche audience. It

• 1:42Guy Raz?

  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. This is more or less the playbook that Tyler Haney used to launch Outdoor Voices. By the time she decided to debut her athletic apparel brand in 2013, lots of people were telling her that the market was saturated. There was Lululemon and Athleta in addition to the major sports brands like Adidas and Under Armour and Nike, and they were all dominating the so-called athleisure market. But Tyler saw a gap in that market she thought she

• 2:23Guy Raz?

  could fill. You see, many of the big players were focused on performance athletics. The branding seemed to be for people who wanted to get faster and stronger and work out harder. But Tyler thought there were lots of people who didn't want to do those things, people who just wanted to get out and enjoy the fresh air. So she decided to build Outdoor Voices as an athletic clothing brand for everyone else. But surprisingly, for someone who wanted to build a brand for non-athletes, Tyler Haney was, at one time, actually a super athlete. In Boulder, Colorado, where Tyler grew up, she was a standout track star who was targeted by college recruiters. But as a high school student, Tyler knew two

• 3:05Guy Raz?

  things. She did not want to become an athlete, and she definitely didn't want to go into apparel. In fact, her mom and dad ran a small clothing company, and that business did not sound interesting to her.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  I never wanted to be in apparel or fashion, but I was obsessed with the creativity of it. I definitely loved and was obsessed with seeing people start things.

• 3:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  And start things from scratch. And so that builder mentality. I've always been a very creative, design-inclined person. And so I realized I really wanted to be in New York. That was the place to be. That was where everything was happening. And so started working on a portfolio to apply to Parsons School of Design.

• 3:50Guy Raz?

  So you get to New York, and you start your degree there. And where did your mind take you? Where did you start to think, all right, this is what I could do when I'm done?

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had no idea what I wanted to do until probably the third year in Parsons. So what instead I did was find a bunch of different jobs while I was in school to kind of test and learn. So in my sophomore year, I went to a company called Launch Collective. They were an incubator for startups and startups in the fashion and kind of design space. And so I got to kind of run through working with different companies at very different stages and experienced a lot, kind of simultaneously going to school at Parsons.

• 4:36Guy Raz?

  So how did you start to think about maybe actually doing apparel? Maybe actually trying this out? What happened?

• 4:44Speaker 00

  So throughout my four years at Parsons, I had lost any sort of commitment to activity, which was, which was kind of wild, given I'd grown up in a, in a place like Boulder and obsessed with sports and, and many sports. But I recognized that without teammates or coaches or practice or games to stay active, I had completely stopped.

• 5:10Guy Raz?

  So, so what happened? Like, was there just a moment or a day where you were like, all right, I gotta go for a run? I just like, I'm, I'm really not feeling right. I'm off.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was in my senior year and I, I kind of remembered, okay, exercise in the past just helped me be more clear. I feel far from clear, let's try this. So pulled out my, my running gear. It was Nike at the time, a top and bottom. I think it was like bright purple and black and very shiny. Put that suit on and went jogging for the first time in three to four years on the West Side Highway. And I was out there, not even a mile, I think 0.8 miles at a very recreational pace and realized I have not moved my body, I've not exercised in such a long time. This, this is a wake up call. This is wild.

• 6:00Guy Raz?

  And when you got home, when you got back to your door, I'm like, were you like, okay, I've got to get back on track here? Or were you just sort of crushed here? This is not, maybe this isn't, this isn't for me.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  No, I was, I was elated. I was so happy to have. Just simply through a bit of sweat, felt like I found myself again.

• 6:20Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  And so after that, that small run, I wanted more of that feeling again. And movement became something that I craved on a daily basis again and became this release, this almost kidlike recess. It was the time that I could think clearly again and kind of get my wits about me. And so started to kind of build that muscle, that practice, that routine into my life again.

• 6:47Guy Raz?

  And when did you start to see activewear? I mean, like, how did you start to think that there's a problem with activewear? With the stuff I wear and run, that's a problem that needs to be solved?

• 6:57Speaker 00

  So I was still wearing my Nike as I kind of got back into running. If you looked at the Nikes and Underarmors of the world, they were built on this credo, harder, better, faster, stronger. And, you know, I was wearing kind of shiny, bright spandex that you'd think... The clothing had this connotation of like, high performance, high, high intensity, yet I was out there moving in it at a very recreational pace. So there was this personal dissonance between what I was wearing and what I was doing and the feeling I wanted to achieve through what I was doing that, that I couldn't reconcile. And so on one of those recreationally paced runs, it dawned on me that there was an opportunity

• 7:41Speaker 00

  to kind of reframe activity for, for folks that weren't pursuing it to be the fastest.

• 7:47Guy Raz?

  So you felt like, like activewear, right? Like the Nikes and the Lululemons and those were really designed for people who were already going to the gym three, four times a week, or running a few times a week, or going to yoga, or had a routine, but that there was no like, like, did you ever, did you ever see the movie Dodgeball?

• 8:06Speaker 00

  Yes, of course.

• 8:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah, like, there was no average Joe's gym, right?

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:10Guy Raz?

  There was no clothing for average Joe's gym.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:14Guy Raz?

  Was that, I mean, is that what you were thinking?

• 8:17Speaker 00

  I wasn't thinking average Joe's. I was, I was really more so thinking the opposite of the competitive athlete. So there's the Steph Currys of the world where winning is everything. And like, there's the me's of the world and, and... Likely a lot more me's of the world that were just needing to find motivation to be active on a daily basis because it was good for me, made me a happier, healthier person. And that's kind of what I started to piece together on these runs. I started to realize that this pressure that surrounded being athletic was not what would drive people to be active on a daily basis. And so I started to think through creating a company or an experience where it was really

• 9:01Speaker 00

  rooted in play.

• 9:03Guy Raz?

  So Tyler, it sounds to me like you really started to think about brand, right? I want to develop a brand that represents X, Y, and Z, but that you didn't necessarily have the product that you would sell as part of that brand. Like you hadn't started with, I want to make clothes and then I want to build a movement around this shirt. It was, I want to build a movement and then I'm going to figure out what the product is.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Correct. Yes. It was this feeling that I was addicted to, obsessed with unpacking and kind of evolving. And for me, I realized that the future of athletics wasn't about being there first, but about being there most frequently and consistently. And so I wanted to start to think about what drove that consistency. Like what if there's a brand or a path that frees fitness from performance?

• 9:53Guy Raz?

  I mean, it's, there's a lot of similarities between this and like Glossier and what Emily Weiss built, because she started with a blog and just writing about, you know, skincare and self-care. And it, the makeup, the cosmetics came later after she already had this kind of following of people who just loved ordinary women talking about how they take care of their skin.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I see what you're saying. It was definitely about building that feeling and brand, brand first. And I started to do it just in a simple way before I had any sort of product. And I started to bring people together, inviting friends to go on jogs with me, inviting them to sign up for half marathons with me, which also my intent was to make it fun. And what my intent was to make it, you know, that we'd go at a pace that you could still talk and it'd be social. And it started to get people together on kind of these jogs and these informal meetups. And it really did start with community first ahead of product.

• 10:55Guy Raz?

  But do you remember like what the tipping point was to do apparel? I mean, you grew up around apparel. Your mom and dad and aunt and uncle had this apparel line. And you knew how challenging that industry was. And so do you remember what it was where you thought, OK? I mean, was there a conversation you had with somebody? Or just, or you just thought, this is the way to do it. It's got to be athletic wear.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  I think these clothes that I had worn, you know, through track practice, et cetera, were packed with this pressure to be fastest. And so the first place that I recognized there was opportunity to, to kind of like tangibly create something that, that could be emotionally packed with this playfulness was with the clothing that I was wearing on these jogs. And so I looked down. I was still wearing bright Chinese spandex. And I said, I want to create an outfit that reflects the freedom and kind of the playfulness of this feeling that I'm excited about right now.

• 12:03Guy Raz?

  Do you remember like the first time you went back to your dorm, wherever you were living, and you started to sketch out what they could look like?

• 12:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was right out of school. So I think in 2012, which was when I started to put pen to paper. And it's funny looking back because the crop top and the two-tone legging, which are some of our bestsellers today, are the first two things I sketched. I had no idea how to make them because I, I had not gone to Parsons for fashion design by any means. But a lot of the greatness of going to a school like Parsons was you were able to visualize your ideas. And so I was very comfortable in a sketchbook. I started sketching out this outfit, this idea of a single outfit. For activity that was made of technical materials that were comfortable to move in,

• 12:55Speaker 00

  but didn't have the connotations of competitive athlete.

• 12:59Guy Raz?

  And it was like, it was a top and it was like stretch pants, right? Like that you would run in?

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Yep. Yeah, a crop top, so effectively a sports bra and then, and then pants.

• 13:11Guy Raz?

  But what, what was the thing that you were gonna make, make different? Was it not gonna feel like, how was it gonna be different?

• 13:19Speaker 00

  So for me, it started with the material. So traditional activewear feels shiny, kind of spandex-y, very synthetic. I wanted something with more of a natural hand feel that could integrate into your daily wardrobe, so something you'd wear with a cotton sweatshirt or some, you know, pieces from your closet. And so as soon as I had sketched out this top and bottom, and the intent was to always pair those two things together, it became kind of your outfit for doing things, your outfit for being active in a recreational way. I realized that the material was the most important aspect of athletic product.

• 13:57Guy Raz?

  So this is the thing, right? Like, we've had Chip Wilson on the show who founded Lululemon, but he founded it in his, you know, 40s after he'd already had a snowboard apparel business. And so he was familiar with different materials and sourcing and, you know, those kinds of things. Your family had a small apparel company, but I'm assuming it was mostly just cotton, right?

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 14:19Guy Raz?

  You're now talking about the most complex material, right? Like, where did you begin? Where did you even know where to go to find out like, how this stuff is made and how you could like know which material to use?

• 14:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I became the Google queen.

• 14:38Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  So literally like, and people ask me this a lot, but creating product was not something I studied. I didn't go to Parsons for that, but there's so much you can learn by, by Googling and becoming obsessed with finding solutions to your questions. So I was obsessed with figuring out where the mecca of materials for technical yarns was and, and. Through Google, found Outdoor Retailer and got myself there.

• 15:05Guy Raz?

  Outdoor retailer?

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Outdoor retailer, which is...

• 15:07Guy Raz?

  What is that?

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, that is the biggest trade show for technical sports vendors to come together.

• 15:15Guy Raz?

  So you Googling like material, like your search terms, where I mean, I'm just thinking about me because I don't feel like high-tech, sweat-wicking material, you know, enter. And eventually you land on the site for like a trade show that happens to be the trade show for fabric?

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So Googling for hours and hours and hours and days and days and days to narrow it down. So eventually recognized that was where all arrows pointed to. And so that was held in Utah.

• 15:51Guy Raz?

  All right. So you find out about this trade show and you, what'd you do? Did you like register as a buyer or as an attendee or?

• 15:58Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, you paid for it. So figured out whatever the right credentials were and asked my dad to come along with me. So from New York, flew to Boulder, hopped in a car, we drove to Salt Lake City. We went to Outdoor Retailer and I went and shook hands and listened to and spoke to probably 100-plus vendors.

• 16:18Guy Raz?

  So you went with your dad there and did you go as a business owner? Or did you, like when you met people, right, did you say, hi, I'm Tyler Haney and I'm with... Did you have a company or did you just?

• 16:28Speaker 00

  Oh, no. I used the student card. I used the student card for far too long or way too long, perfectly too long.

• 16:33Guy Raz?

  Oh, you said, I'm a student at Parsons?

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 16:36Guy Raz?

  And I'm looking into just different material for my designs or like, what was your... What did you say to people when you met them?

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I brought my sketchbook. My badge said Parsons School of Design and my pitch would be I'm building the next great activewear brand. And I'm looking for the best-in-class material for these two products. And here are the four criteria that I need. And certainly people would be like, who's this young kid? Get out of here. Until I found one lovely guy named Stefan. And he took an interest in kind of the design and what I was looking for and really spent time with me, helping me understand kind of the nuances of this material.

• 17:21Guy Raz?

  He was a vendor at the trade show?

• 17:23Speaker 00

  He was a vendor.

• 17:24Guy Raz?

  And what was he selling?

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Materials, raw materials.

• 17:27Guy Raz?

  I'm just, I'm trying to get into this trade show, right? I'm Stephane. I've got a business and my objective at the trade show is to get as much business as possible to walk away with as many potential leads so then I go back to my office and then we can fulfill orders, right? But then there's this like 22-year-old kid, right? Who's coming up and saying, hey, can I talk to you? I'm trying, I'm trying to figure out why. What, what do you think? Like what? Yeah, why, why do you think he did it?

• 17:56Speaker 00

  It's a great question. I view it as luck. I mean, I was persistent as hell. And so I was going to, after I had his contact, not let him not talk to me. And I think there must have been something about that persistence that, you know, was endearing.

• 18:14Guy Raz?

  So you get back to New York and you follow up with this guy Stephane? And what did you do? Did you fly out to see him? Did you have a conversation over the phone and say, here's what I want? Can you make it?

• 18:27Speaker 00

  So he, he had my list of requirements and he started to send me headers. Heads are kind of from their fabric library, product or materials that they've developed in the past that kind of allow you to orient around kind of what you like and don't like from a hand feel perspective. And so using these headers, I was able to say, yes, this one has the softness I'm looking for, or no, this one doesn't have the aesthetic I'm looking for. And so we sent headers to then fine tune the request that they would then start to develop for me.

• 18:59Guy Raz?

  But I mean, a company that makes fabric, right? And is going to make like a bespoke kind of fabric for somebody. I'm assuming that they have like a minimum order, like you gotta order, I don't know, $10,000 worth or $50,000 worth of material before they're, they'll even consider doing this for you.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what we ended up doing was finding, Stephane, he and his team were constantly making new materials to present to the likes of the Nikes and Underermans and Lulu's. So they had created a material kind of at a similar time that they ended up showing me. And maybe they had shown it to the other companies, but no one had picked it. And it was a fabric that really checked the boxes for me in terms of what I was looking for. And so I ordered an initial few rolls to start to make samples out of.

• 19:50Guy Raz?

  So they had this material that was exactly right for you and you could order it and I'm assuming that you were just using your savings to pay for this probably couple hundred dollars or thousand dollars or whatever.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had had different jobs throughout school and so was able to have savings and use those for those initial samples.

• 20:10Guy Raz?

  All right, so they come out to you in New York. By the way, are you out of the dorms at this point?

• 20:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm living in the East Village. A needed place to store bolts and material. They're about six feet tall and 12 inches wide. And so the only place to store it was in my room. So went to Ikea, got a bunk bed, took the first shelf of the bunk bed out, lived on the top bunk bed, and my new product studio was right under that top bunk bed shelf. And so had my products stored there.

• 20:42Guy Raz?

  All right, so you have this stuff, you've got your drawings, got your material. Now it's time to make something, right? You've got to make your prototypes.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  Yep. So I started calling friends from school. There were a lot of people who had studied fashion. And so essentially was starting to interview for designers to simply help me understand how to connect the dots between I've got this, I've got this material, I've got these sketches, I don't know what to do next.

• 21:08Guy Raz?

  And in 2013, like what were you doing for money?

• 21:13Speaker 00

  I had gone in-house with one of the fashion companies that I had met through Launch Collective. And so I worked their wall, parallel path in kind of making this product for what would become OV.

• 21:29Guy Raz?

  So you had a full-time job as a, I guess, an assistant to?

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. I think my title must have been something assistant, yes.

• 21:37Guy Raz?

  And then on the side, like at night on the weekends, you were thinking about this thing that you were trying to figure out?

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Exactly. So going to Parsons, I knew a lot of design students, so I would start to have them over. And a number of Parsons students pointed me to the Midtown Garment District. There's tons of factories, et cetera, that you wouldn't be aware of until you really start searching.

• 22:01Guy Raz?

  Right, they're behind those, like you look at these buildings and they're just in those buildings.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, never knew that world existed.

• 22:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  And most of them... Almost all of them only made high-end fashion product. So they weren't wanting to make activewear. So kind of ran into a roadblock there. I'd go in and say, hey, let's make, like, can you help me make this? I know nothing about pattern making, but I, I need to make a pattern and then cut the fabric into this pattern and have it sewn up.

• 22:32Guy Raz?

  Wait, would you just, would you like use contacts from, from Parsons? Or would you just, would you call and say, hey, I'm a graduate of Parsons and I, I want to meet? Or would you just ring the doorbells and show up?

• 22:43Speaker 00

  Guy, I did it all. I, I, I would call, I would show up. I would find myself in factories that were definitely not willing to work with me. Um, most were like, this isn't what we do, can't help you. But there was one factory called Sunshine and it was run by these two Asian women who were lovely. And for whatever reason, said yes to making the patterns for me. And they had warned me that they hadn't worked with this type of material before. But I said, hey, let's try, let's get a pattern started. I, I want to see what comes back. And, and so after many no's, we don't make this type of product. I got a yes from these two women at Sunshine, Sunshine Production.

• 23:27Guy Raz?

  And, and did you have to like order a bunch of them?

• 23:29Speaker 00

  They started with a pattern. So I, so I needed to take the sketches from my sketchbook and create 3D patterns. So that, you know, they'd fit a human.

• 23:38Guy Raz?

  So it was not going to be like the finished product. It was just going to be, but it was going to be a sports bra and, and the pants and the, like the, the running pants. Right? Like the physical, when they were done with it, you would have, you would have that.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Yep. The first proto, the first go at the crop top and the running pants.

• 23:57Guy Raz?

  I'm just trying to figure out why they agreed to do this. Just did they like you? Do you think, what, did they like the product? What, what made them agree to do this for you?

• 24:08Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm quite charming, you know. No, I went in, I think I was so clear on exactly what I wanted and I wasn't gonna give up. That though there were many no's, I was gonna find a yes. And these manufacturing houses are extremely busy ahead of fashion weeks and then when they do production, but there are off times. And so they're trying to fill every hour. And so I think they must just have had a gap in their scheduling and I was able to slip in.

• 24:37Guy Raz?

  All right. How long did it take for that, for those prototypes to be made?

• 24:41Speaker 00

  When I first went to Sunshine, I had the product, I had the designs, I asked them to make the patterns. They came back and the leggings almost had three legs in them. It was, something had been lost in translation and by no means did it look like what I thought it would come back looking like. So it took probably two to three weeks to really sit there up at the factory with them and understand what pattern making was and really kind of translate for them what I wanted in what seemed like a pretty simple, straightforward running legging and crop top. But two to three weeks later, I got my initial prototypes.

• 25:21Guy Raz?

  And how'd they look?

• 25:23Speaker 00

  So they looked beautiful. I put them on and was gonna be the first person to try them and pretty quickly found that they weren't stretchy. Like they had been sewn with a type of machine where the yarn is not essentially constructing the garment in a way to stretch. So I go for a run in this new product and seams are popping everywhere.

• 25:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  And it's very clear to me that this is not the right recipe.

• 25:51Guy Raz?

  So you gotta go back to the drawing board, I guess?

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Yes. So I call up Stephane, my material guy, and say, "Stephane, here's where I've been. I've been in Midtown. What a disaster. All the seams are popping. This isn't working. Help me figure out what's next." And Stephane has the connections to all of the activewear manufacturers. That was a big unlock for me. And so he said, "Ty, there's no one who makes activewear on the East Coast. Come to LA." And so I book a ticket to LA. I stay with a friend in Venice and I Google map where I where I end up needing to go to meet this manufacturer that Stefan connected me with and it's South El Monte, California,

• 26:35Speaker 00

  which is an hour and a half south of where I was in Venice in the middle of nowhere.

• 26:42Guy Raz?

  All right, so you so you bring your sketches again to this place in El Monte and they agree to make you a few prototypes again?

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I still have the paper patterns that were made by the women at Sunshine Factory in New York. I bring the samples that I had run in that had popped seams and said, hey, help me understand what's wrong here. And Jennifer was her name at the El Monte factory and she looks at it and says, ah, you need flatlock seaming. This is easy. And so flatlock seaming was essentially what was going to allow us to sew the leggings and crop tops so that when you move, the seams have enough give that they don't pop and break. And so I I spent a lot of time going back and forth to this El Monte factory so that I could go back to New York with the right stitching and enough product to start to

• 27:37Speaker 00

  get on friends and family.

• 27:39Guy Raz?

  I'm curious about this point, right, Tyler? Were you using your own money? Did you have to borrow money from your parents or anyone at this point to to just pay for just the basic startup costs?

• 27:53Speaker 00

  This is why I was so adamant about maintaining my job because there was no other way to fund this and I was purely funding it through through my own savings. Granted, it was very small scale.

• 28:07Guy Raz?

  So it wasn't that expensive?

• 28:08Speaker 00

  I could. It wasn't that expensive. Ten samples, I think, probably cost me a thousand dollars, but it was all money that I was collecting from having a full-time job.

• 28:19Guy Raz?

  So they make a prototype in El Monte and how does it how does it come out? How's it turn out?

• 28:24Speaker 00

  So I started getting it on the friends that I had recruited to start to be part of these little jogger sessions with me. Two close friends, Annie, Ryan, I lived with them. I gave them both a kit when I got back from LA and said, hey, take this jogging to the gym, et cetera, give me feedback. And so at a super micro level, started product testing, starting with myself and then with like a small extended group of friends.

• 28:50Guy Raz?

  And what were they telling you?

• 28:52Speaker 00

  People loved it. And that was like the fit was right on, the material was really comfortable and they started wearing it not only to the gym, but for more of their life and kind of with their daily clothing.

• 29:07Guy Raz?

  This is 2013. You've got some pretty good prototypes, you're getting feedback from people, you're still working full time. At what point do you think, all right, I gotta just jump into this two feet?

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was intent on keeping my job as long as possible. And I think that's something that I'd recommend for people in the startup space or wanting to create something, hold on to that job as long as you possibly can. But once I started to have product that was really working, I then started working on positioning again, like what is this brand? What is this opportunity that's going to connect to the product and be something that I want to go get more people on board with?

• 29:54Guy Raz?

  So how did you settle on the name Act of Our Voices?

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was actually at a bar on Rivington in New York with friends and kept coming back to this feeling as a little kid and like getting up and being loud and kept describing this need in this activewear space to like shake things up. And so I was with friends talking about that kind of like youthful, fearless little kid and in conversation. I think someone said, do you remember when your mom used to like tell you to use your indoor voice? And it really started to click there. I was like, outdoor voice, that it's about getting loud, it's about boldness, it's youthfulness, it's getting big, it's.

• 30:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I tell my kids, use their library voice.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:42Guy Raz?

  When they're too loud. And so the idea was like, this is going to be your outdoor voice. This is where you can scream and shout and jump and all those things.

• 30:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, thinking back to play and recess and that like unbounded enthusiasm you have as a little kid, like that's what I wanted the brand to evoke. And it came up naturally in conversation and I think someone else said it and then I grabbed onto it.

• 31:06Guy Raz?

  I loved recess. That was my favorite. It's the best.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  Right?

• 31:11Guy Raz?

  All right. So how are you going to get your apparel into stores? What do you do at this point, 2013? You've got a good prototype, but you got to get it in front of customers or potential customers.

• 31:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I started Googling trade shows again and found a show called Magic, which was in Las Vegas. And this was where all kind of the startup brands would go to get seen by boutiques. And so after that initial run of 10, I think I paid $5,000 to get 200 units or 200 tops and bottoms made so that I could show up to this trade show in Las Vegas and start pitching Outdoor Voice as the next great activewear brand.

• 31:58Guy Raz?

  This is, I think, a pretty famous trade show in Las Vegas, right? It's like a couple of times a year and you went there, you bought like a vendor or like a sales badge or?

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got the tiniest booth possible, probably $1,200 to rent.

• 32:14Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  And I'm in this little postage stamp and had these samples on the racks and started meeting people. And lots of people would take a look, not interested. Felt like, is this really the place to be? Like, this seems, this seems like it's not working. And then this guy named Ian walked in. And he owned a little tiny fashion boutique, but really impactful fashion boutique. I'd find out later.

• 32:42Guy Raz?

  In New York?

• 32:43Speaker 00

  In London.

• 32:44Guy Raz?

  In London?

• 32:44Speaker 00

  In London. It's called Garb Store. And he comes in and says, this is interesting. I love the material. What is it? And I start describing to him, hey, this is the next great act of our brand. It's Outdoor Voices. Come look at the product. I'm doing this, this, and this with it. And he says, wow, this is awesome. I want to make an order.

• 33:04Guy Raz?

  Wow. That was your first order?

• 33:06Speaker 00

  That was my first order.

• 33:07Guy Raz?

  And how many pieces did he want?

• 33:09Speaker 00

  I believe it was in the 50s, so it was tiny. But that was the first order. And I left that trade show magic with a handful of POs, so purchase orders, so intent to buy.

• 33:20Guy Raz?

  Was it hard to get those made quickly? Or did you just, were you able to call the factory in El Monte and say, hey, I've got these orders and I need to do 200 more?

• 33:30Speaker 00

  So I pick up the phone. I called Jennifer in El Monte. Say, hey, we've, we've got our first POs. Jen makes it happen. I think I, I left with seven purchase orders and I ended up fulfilling five. And so financially, I was able to make it happen from, from savings.

• 33:47Guy Raz?

  A couple thousand bucks or a few thousand dollars?

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Couple thousand bucks, exactly.

• 33:51Guy Raz?

  Got it. All right. So you get the, the stuff made. You send it out to these boutiques. And does anything happen instantly?

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. About two weeks after the product arrived at the boutiques, I get a call from Jay Creel. This woman, Tracy, calls me. She says, hey, I saw Outdoor Voices, your product at Garb Store in London, and I love it. Can we talk?

• 34:15Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  And she said, hey, we have a platform called the Discover Program. We're interested in, in talking with you about bringing Outdoor Voices onto this program. So Tracy, I go and meet with her. I bring her the product. And after I meet with her, a few weeks later, I get a purchase order for 11,000 units.

• 34:37Guy Raz?

  Wow. That's not going to cost a couple thousand bucks.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:41Guy Raz?

  That's like, you're talking now like hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe?

• 34:44Speaker 00

  It was $500,000, a $500,000 purchase order.

• 34:49Guy Raz?

  And, and was there a deadline? Did you have to get it done like within a certain period of time?

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was within, I think the ship date was five months later.

• 34:58Guy Raz?

  And did you think, no problem, I'll figure this out in five months and get this made?

• 35:03Speaker 00

  That's exactly when I realized it was time to quit my job.

• 35:09Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Tyler scrambled to come up with the money and then make enough kids for J. Crew within five months. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 35:32Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around the beginning of 2014, and Tyler Haney is working on fulfilling that big purchase order from J. Crew. And the immediate problem she needs to solve is money. How to come up with the money upfront to make 11,000 units of the Outdoor Voices kit?

• 35:52Speaker 00

  My first one to my aunt. And so Annie, I said, I've got this PO. You're familiar with this. Are you guys willing to invest? And they put 25K in. They were the first funders, which was awesome. So with that purchase order in hand and essentially a commitment from J. Crew to this 500K, it made it a lot easier, presumably, than without that PO to raise that first 25K.

• 36:19Guy Raz?

  So how much money did you raise from friends and family?

• 36:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think I raised within two to two and a half months, 400K, which was more than I needed to fulfill that 500K order.

• 36:33Guy Raz?

  And this was like 10,000 here, 25 there, maybe 50?

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Yep. It was small bites.

• 36:39Guy Raz?

  Who'd you go to? Just where'd you go? Because a lot of people, right, are like, man, 40,000 bucks? How do you raise that money? Like, where do you find that money?

• 36:48Speaker 00

  So I started, went to people that I had met in New York that I knew had been successful and had expressed intent as kind of they got word that I was working on Outdoor Voices. So I think there were three friends in New York who ended up putting between 10 to 20. Thousand dollars in, I started Googling for kind of seed investors and people that I could find online that put initial money into into companies. And there was a guy named Calva Purri, who I remember reading a ton about. And so I went to him, knocked on his door and said, hey, this is what I'm doing. Would love for you to put 25 to 50 K in, and he did.

• 37:29Guy Raz?

  Who was he? He was just an investor in New York?

• 37:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was an entrepreneur and investor.

• 37:35Guy Raz?

  And you found out about him through just?

• 37:36Speaker 00

  Googling.

• 37:37Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. Again, back to just typing in, you know, investors in New York, fashion investors, apparel investors, early-stage investors, et cetera. So I think having that J. Crew order was really helpful early on because I knew that if I could figure out how to get these units produced, I'd have a big check coming back, you know, within five months.

• 38:01Guy Raz?

  So they were going to pay for it? And there was no risk that they would like return unused product and you would just have to eat that?

• 38:07Speaker 00

  I'm sure there was. I at that point wasn't thinking about it. I was like, 11,000 units, we're going to get this across the finish line.

• 38:14Guy Raz?

  Got it. All right. So you get the money. Did that factory in Almonte make those 11,000 units?

• 38:19Speaker 00

  They made the 11,000 units and I was there in LA with them on the last possible ship date before J. Crew could cancel the P.O. So we somehow caught it all together and were able to produce right in the nick of time.

• 38:37Guy Raz?

  Now, I remember talking to Sarah Blakely about fulfilling her first order for Neiman Marcus of Spanx. And it's actually not so simple because when you're working with a big company like Neiman Marcus, or in your case, J. Crew, there's all these things you have to, documents you have to fill, and there's specific requirements that you have to meet. And, right, it's a very complex process. You don't just put stuff in a box and ship it to J. Crew, right?

• 39:01Speaker 00

  Right, yeah. From the way it needs to be tagged, there's a whole system and kind of way of doing things. So worked very closely with Tracy at J. Crew to really understand what was needed. And I forgot to mention this, but I knew I needed to be in LA because I wasn't going to run the risk of production going off the tracks. So I... Rented out my apartment in New York, or my room, my bunk room. Found a couch to rent in Venice and ended up living with these lovely folks that I found on Craigslist and would drive every single day from Venice to El Monte and Venice

• 39:41Speaker 00

  to El Monte, making sure that every one of these 11,000 units was going to be in perfect tip-top shape when they got to J. Crew.

• 39:49Guy Raz?

  So when they got to J. Crew, were they promoting the product? Was it totally different from everything else they were selling? How was it going to be visible to J. Crew customers?

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, this was five-plus years ago and it was really when this active where space was starting to take off.

• 40:09Guy Raz?

  Blowing up, yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Yes, blowing up. And so J. Crew had had a lot of success with this Discover program where they brought new brands to their customer. And so, put me on the Discover program. They did a shoot with me, actually, in Central Park in the product and then described the product and launched it.

• 40:29Guy Raz?

  So it launches at J. Crew and what happened? How did it do?

• 40:34Speaker 00

  It did phenomenally. And so I think within the first week, they had already sold through 50% of the product. At that moment, I was really thankful for the opportunity to get a lot of eyeballs on the brand, but I knew, okay, now's the time to click it into gear and start building this thing. And that was 2014. I started putting together a list of larger investors that I had read would fund early-stage companies, et cetera. I worked with a friend of mine that worked in finance to really start to put a business model together and this deck that I would then go pitch investors in New York with.

• 41:17Guy Raz?

  All right, so you've got to raise money, right, to really get this going. Where did you go? Did you just start? Cold emailing potential investors?

• 41:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I created a list of 25 VCs.

• 41:33Guy Raz?

  That you found like where, like through?

• 41:35Speaker 00

  Reading and TechCrunch and through asking people and people who would raise money, et cetera. So I started emailing, I still had my, my student EDU address, which was quite funny. It somehow hadn't gotten shut off. And so for a number of these folks, I started emailing them from my Parsons.edu address and saying, hey, I'd love to pitch you on my new idea, Dr. Voices, da, da, da, da. But I really leaned on the student card to get into these folks' offices.

• 42:07Guy Raz?

  And you think using your student address helped?

• 42:12Speaker 00

  It definitely helped. It got me into these initial meetings. The initial meetings weren't where I got funded, but these initial meetings were hugely important as, as kind of practice routines to really refine my pitch. I'd show up with the product, I'd show up with the deck and, and for the first time ever go pitch on this idea I had coming out of Parsons as a graduate.

• 42:33Guy Raz?

  Do you remember roughly what percentage of those 25 got back to you and said, sure, come by?

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Of the 25, let's see, I would say probably 19 got back to me.

• 42:43Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  Which was crazy, yeah.

• 42:45Guy Raz?

  And, and out of those 19, when you started to go meet with them, did any of them say, this is awesome, I'm in, I want to actually give you money?

• 42:52Speaker 00

  Oh, no. Every, every single one of those first meetings were like, thank you, love this, thanks for, love that you had the courage to get in here, but you need some, this needs work. I mean, I had never done this before and I knew that by getting into the room of, of some of these folks, I would learn a lot. And I had at that time, this idea of just begin, just begin, just begin. So I began.

• 43:18Guy Raz?

  And what specifically were these investors saying? Like, were you getting feedback like, you gotta do more of this, or not enough of this, or, or this isn't right?

• 43:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, pretty consistently, the first probably five conversations I'd get, but we have Under Armour and we have Nike, like, why do we need another activewear brand?

• 43:37Guy Raz?

  Which is a fair question. There's Lululemon, like, athleisure is so saturated, right? I mean, 2014, that's probably what people were saying.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And what I started to piece together was I was in offices with men and these traditional activewear brands had been built by men and really catered to men. So this credo and this positioning around the competitive athlete, the harder, better, faster, stronger, was something that was familiar to the folks that I was pitching. And so what I started to recognize was me over here pitching this activewear brand around play and freeing fitness from performance didn't make sense to these folks that had grown up as competitive athletes.

• 44:29Guy Raz?

  And what was the breakthrough? How did you finally get somebody to say, yeah, I'll give you some money?

• 44:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I started to realize that going into these offices with mostly males and having conversations with them was not going to get me there. So ahead of going into a number of these meetings, I would start sending product to the women in the offices and the wives of some of these investors. It did happen to be only male investors. So I started to find that by getting product, getting the product, the kit, onto the women in the offices and the wives, I started to get people that were willing to spend more time and hear me out and understand, ah, wait, this could be something. This, I'm starting to picture this. This could be something real. I started to get more time with folks.

• 45:17Guy Raz?

  And who was the person who said, all right, I'll give you some money? Who was the first one?

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, Peter Boyce from General Catalyst. General Catalyst is a big VC. You're probably familiar with him, out of Boston. He saw the product, saw the pitch, had gotten product on his girlfriend Natalia. She loved it and he said, I love this concept. I want to back it. And they were the first people to lead our seed round.

• 45:48Guy Raz?

  And then with that, you know, once you started to raise somebody, how much did you raise in that first round? Do you remember?

• 45:55Speaker 00

  1.1 million dollars.

• 45:56Guy Raz?

  Wow. Okay, so you've got 1.1 million. Sounds like a lot of money, but making clothing and building a team, that's really expensive. At this point, was it still just you or did you have somebody with you?

• 46:07Speaker 00

  I had hired two, two additional team members. One to really focus on sales and then one to focus on customer experience. So at this time, 2014, we started, we launched OutdoorVoices.com. A scrappy website, but a place that as these J. Crew customers started to learn about us, we hoped would start to visit Outdoor Voices and wanted something to exist, to sell more product. And so used the seed round money to hire an additional three folks, open an office, because we had been working out of my apartment in the East Village, and then to make more product.

• 46:48Guy Raz?

  And is J. Crew still selling your stuff at this point?

• 46:51Speaker 00

  In 2015, yes.

• 46:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  And again, it was a really great way to, you know, get 11,000 people quickly to know about us. But after that initial buy with J. Crew, we decided, hey, we want to own this directly. We want to start building Outdoor Voices as a direct-to-consumer brand.

• 47:12Guy Raz?

  All right, so with that money, like, how do you start thinking about how to get this brand out into the world beyond J. Crew?

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Back to when I was initially starting the product, I had always brought these groups of people together to do an activity. And at this stage, I started realizing that this offline kind of gathering of community was really the best way to drive word of mouth. And so we hosted our first dog jog in, in New York. And I had sent out an invite. Outdoor Voices invites you to their first dog jog.

• 47:46Guy Raz?

  Just to everybody you knew, every email address you had?

• 47:49Speaker 00

  Every email address we had. And I expected maybe 50 people to show up. And, and it ended up being close to probably 200 that showed up with their dogs. And that's when I, I really started to realize that people were resonating with the little bits of the brand and the little bits of the product that were starting to get out into the world. So we started posting content of these little informal groups, getting together for different activities and hashtagging "doing things." "Doing things" had become the Outdoor Voices mantra. Any sort of activity through this Outdoor Voices group was hashtag doing things.

• 48:26Guy Raz?

  So with that $1.1 million, were you able to actually open a store?

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we opened our first store in Austin, Texas, which I had been dating someone in Austin while I lived in New York and visited Austin for the first time. Straight from the airport when I landed in Austin, went to a spot called Barton Springs, which it's essentially a football field-sized, spring-fed pool at the downtown center of Austin.

• 48:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  Got out of the water, looked up and said, "This is such a recreational town. This feels like the spiritual or long-term home for Outdoor Voices." And so, we opened our first store in Austin and had found this house, 800-square-foot house with a lawn next to it, and said, "This is perfect." So, we spent $150,000 to build out our first store in Austin, Texas.

• 49:23Guy Raz?

  All right, so you've got the store in Austin, but $1 million is not going to be enough runway. You've got to pay the rent, you've got to pay your people, you've got to make clothing. So I have to assume that you had to go right back to it to really start to raise more money?

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, so with that round of funding, at that point, we had, from an awareness standpoint, relied on the J.Crew units and new customers driven from that, as well as word of mouth. I then reached out to a friend from Parsons. Actually, we hadn't known each other, she became a friend later on, but Leandra Medine, who had this blog called The Man Repeller, has this blog called The Man Repeller, and asked her to do a collaboration.

• 50:08Guy Raz?

  And The Man Repeller, this is a blog, like, just for people who don't know it, it's like a, it's like kind of a quirky fashion blog, right?

• 50:15Speaker 00

  Yep. And I essentially wanted to take Leandra and work with her to create a customized kit. So same top and bottom, but influenced by her personality. And so launched the Man Repeller kit. The kit came with a bag that had on the outside printed in it for the smoothie and had like a little popsicle keychain and like a vintage jump rope. And I thought she was so perfect to, as our first kind of collaborative partner, to, to really bring kind of the humor and the fun to the Activewear space and, and be a really good illustration of, of kind of what we meant by activity for the fun of it.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  And pretty quickly after that launched, got a post in from Lena Dunham in this kit, the, the Man Repeller kit. And she had been running for the first time on the set of Girls, something for the episode. And on Instagram, she had a caption that said, I've never been a runner, but I'm, I'm learning to run for the first time. And this kit makes me feel powerful, swift and strong.

• 51:27Guy Raz?

  This is in like 2015?

• 51:29Speaker 00

  This is in 2015.

• 51:30Guy Raz?

  And that's like, wow, Girls is like one of the hottest shows on TV. She's a massive celebrity. She was, I guess, read this blog or she was like a reader of the blog and that's how she, she got the kit?

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, she was a fan of Leandra and Man Repeller and got the kit and it, and wore it for that episode of, of Girls and, and posted about her experience of running for the first time.

• 51:55Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  That was a really meaningful first moment in the sense that Lena wasn't the first person you think of as, you know, someone that an Activewear brand is going to partner with. And this was at the time where the athlete was such a kind of one note look. They were like sinewy with muscles, et cetera. And Lena comes blasting into, into our world, wearing the kit with curves and never having run. And it was a perfect example of what we meant by this daily exerciser, this positioning that we knew there was really opportunity to build the next great brand around.

• 52:32Guy Raz?

  So now at this point, right, Series A, you'd raised 1.1 million dollars. You're at your Series A. Lena Dunham's worn your stuff. Like, you're getting some traction. You got a shop in Austin. There's buzz. Like, and I think you raised like $7.5 million in that Series A.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 52:49Guy Raz?

  Was that a lot easier to raise that money than it was to raise seed money?

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, the seed money, I ended up probably meeting 50 people. So that that initial list of 25 kept growing and growing and growing. But actually having traction and a meaningful amount of traction in a short amount of time made it a lot easier to go back to that group at General Catalyst and put this funding together.

• 53:14Guy Raz?

  I'm curious, Tyler. I mean, why wouldn't a Nike or Lululemon, they could have kind of crowded you out of the marketplace while you were more vulnerable without a real brand. Why do you think that didn't happen?

• 53:30Speaker 00

  I mean, I think our brand is our moat. And so the combination of the activities that we host and the product that people wear while they're engaging in those activities is the magic. And that's, I view my role as essentially kind of the new generation of Jane Fonda, somebody that is at the front of this brand, really helping to inspire and educate and get the world moving. It's a hard combination or recipe for somebody to duplicate.

• 54:02Guy Raz?

  All right. So you, in 2016, you've gone through a Series B. You raised another 13 million. You decide formally to move to Austin. Tyler, how did you feel about being the CEO? I mean, I think you were like 26, 27, maybe 26. I mean, you were managing and running a business and certainly had people working for you who were like a lot older to take some getting used to.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  I mean, being the CEO has been very natural, given the vision is super clear for me. I think in growing this company and at a speedy pace and with a lot of capital around the table and a lot of strong voices, we've been lucky with the funding and engagement around the brand to have Mickey Drexler from J.Crew actually joined as the chairman of the board in 2016.

• 54:54Guy Raz?

  And Mickey Drexler was, for people who don't know, he's like this legendary guy in the industry. He turned Gap around and was at J.Crew. He founded Madewell. How did you get on his radar at all?

• 55:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, he so he had heard about us when we initially collaborated with J Creo. And I think I've been super lucky to have a lot of engaged louder industry voices around the table, but have have had to figure out how to selectively take, you know, experienced advice and know how to channel it in addition to what I believe and understand that to create a company today is meaningfully different than creating a company 30 years ago. And there are differences there.

• 55:41Guy Raz?

  I mean, you've raised, I think, close to $60 million total. Miki Drexler is the chairman of the board. You've got a board. You've got all these investors. As you had and have had more experienced people coming in, particularly men, have you ever felt like, hey, you know, like you're mansplaining this to me, you know, like back off because I know what I want to do. Have you ever had to have that kind of confrontation?

• 56:07Speaker 00

  I wouldn't say it's it's gender specific, but I think one thing that is super clear to me is the the way we've built the outer voices to date is untraditional and it's our own playbook. So I very much believe in creating our own rules to the game. And that's what's driven, you know, the success to date. And so what has become challenging over the last few years is hiring kind of more experience and leadership sometimes comes with folks that want to bring playbooks from other companies. But at the end of the day, taking control and tempering some of the input has been something that I've learned

• 56:46Speaker 00

  over time. To be a CEO, you have to learn how to take control and not necessarily listen to all the voices around the table.

• 56:56Guy Raz?

  You guys have how many shops now?

• 56:58Speaker 00

  We have nine stores.

• 57:00Guy Raz?

  And how many employees?

• 57:01Speaker 00

  We have 350 employees.

• 57:04Guy Raz?

  And through all this, you also like met somebody new in Austin. Because I guess you the person that you were saying you guys split up, but you met somebody new, you got married and you are. Going to be a mom.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  I am, and I'm having a baby mid-November. First time doing it, trying a lot of things. But being pregnant as the CEO of Outdoor Voices has been an extreme sport. I think I've been really focused on, with some of my peers like Whitney from Bumble and Audrey from The Wing, showing that there don't have to be sacrifices from a family perspective that you take to be the CEO of a fast-growing company. And you can do it all, all in harmony.

• 57:51Guy Raz?

  You know, when I think about your story, you can read it one way. Like, it was just you were determined and you went from success to success to success. And here you are. But I wonder, was there a dark moment? Was there a moment on this journey, starting Outdoor Voices, where you had serious doubts or you felt really bad about anything?

• 58:17Speaker 00

  I think every day you kind of run the gamut of emotions based on what's happening with the business and with the team, et cetera. And something that I've been really vocal about with Outdoor Voices, and I think resonates personally, is we're not up against the Nikes or Underarmors of the world. As a company, we're up against people's negative perceptions of themselves. And I think the most difficult thing about being a CEO for the first time, sometimes you wake up and there's negative perception of your ability to get done and to really know what's right, go forward. And so I've really focused, through this experience,

• 59:02Speaker 00

  on surrounding myself with the right people to help continue to drive the confidence in my ability to do this and to grow the company and surround myself with smarter and smarter people that really make this a strong team for the long run.

• 59:17Guy Raz?

  How much of this story do you think is because of luck? And how much do you think it's because you just worked really hard and you're really smart?

• 59:25Speaker 00

  I think it's persistence. So I think this deep rooted knowledge that you know you're never going to give up and you're going to find a way and there's no other option is something that just has connected all these dots for me. People have to believe that you're going to do it and you're not going to stop at anything getting in the way. And so this crazy amount of persistence is really what's gotten me to kind of where I'm at.

• 59:55Guy Raz?

  That's Tyler Haney, founder and CEO of Outdoor Voices. By the way, as you may have caught towards the end of our interview, Tyler and her husband Mark are expecting a baby girl sometime around now. So by the time this podcast hits your feed, it is very likely Tyler will be a new mom.

• 1:00:19Guy Raz?

  And please do stick around because in just a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you're building.

• 1:00:26Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And this week's story starts when Beth Fynbo and a group of new moms took their babies out for lunch.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  We had a small corner table in the pizzeria and they started immediately reaching for like the salt and pepper shakers and the coffee creamer and sugar.

• 1:00:47Guy Raz?

  Because, well, they're babies.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  They think they're funny and they know they're cute. You know, when they drop something and they get the attention of the moms, then they're going to keep doing that thing.

• 1:00:57Guy Raz?

  Anyone who's been to a restaurant with a baby knows this game. You have to move all the choking hazards out of their reach. And then when you give them their actual toys, they usually just drop them.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  And then I thought, well, let me go online and see what exists. There must be something that we can buy that just keeps them busy and makes it easier to take a baby out to eat.

• 1:01:16Guy Raz?

  But Beth couldn't find anything quite right. She wanted some kind of placemat that kept the toys secure, the food from spilling, and could fit in a diaper bag. So she decided to make her own.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  I use these silicone mats from Amazon that are actually designed for your pet's food and water bowls. A carabiner, I don't know how to say that word ever, but a clip that you just clip on. And then I use fishing tethers. There's these little tethers that you can use to clip your pliers to your belt.

• 1:01:48Guy Raz?

  Beth took her homemade placemat and she stuck it in front of her son, Christian, and he loved it. But she wasn't sure if other babies would as well. So she did a little market research in the aisles of Target.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  I would see women at Target with babies and I would say, "Excuse me for just a second, can I ask you a quick question?" And I'd say, "I have this idea, I'm inventing a product." And I would say 100% of the feedback was, "Oh, my gosh, that's genius. Yes, I would buy that."

• 1:02:20Guy Raz?

  Inspired by that feedback, Beth decided to see if she could make something good enough to sell.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  I got my prototype as far as I could on my own. And like I said, I was very rudimentary and I knew I had a great product concept, but I didn't know where to go from there.

• 1:02:36Guy Raz?

  So Beth started looking for someone who could help take her mat concept to the next level. She found a designer in Salt Lake City in early 2018. And a few months later, she received a revamped design in the mail.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  And I don't think I've ever had more emotions in my life than when I grabbed that envelope and took it in the house to open it up and try it out. I opened the package, I pull it out, I take off the plastic wrapping and I set it on my countertop and I couldn't pick it up. It instantly stuck. Before I even pressed down on the suction cups or anything, it was stuck there. And I thought, "This is awesome."

• 1:03:11Guy Raz?

  It was exactly the product Beth had dreamed of. But now she had to figure out how to find the money to make more.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  My stepdad gave me a loan and I used my savings and I sold a car.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  And scrounged together the money to do the first production run.

• 1:03:30Guy Raz?

  Beth also launched a Kickstarter campaign to drum up interest. She actually didn't end up meeting her goal of $45,000, but she says that was a blessing in disguise.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  I couldn't have done it. I just couldn't have done it. I didn't know how much goes into manufacturing and production and all the costs involved with making molds and the timelines. I would have, I would have probably sunk.

• 1:03:52Guy Raz?

  But she didn't. And since last year, Beth has sold almost 2,300 Busy Baby Mats, which translates into around $60,000 in sales. And as for her two-year-old son, Christian, definitely her biggest spokesman.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  People will often approach us and say, oh, my God, that's so cool. Where did you get it? And he'll look up and say, that's my mommy's Busy Baby Mat.

• 1:04:15Guy Raz?

  That's Beth Fynbo. Her product is the Busy Baby Mat. And if you want to find out more or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, howibuiltthis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis or at Guy Raz. Our show was produced this week by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Candice Lim, Julia Carney, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Sequoia Carrillo.

• 1:04:59Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.