What really happened to Outdoor Voices?
Dear Marker Reader,
A couple of weeks ago, news broke that Ty Haney, the founder and CEO of the hot athleisure-wear startup Outdoor Voices, was abruptly stepping down. It turns out that behind the scenes, the company — with $64 million in venture backing — was drowning in unsustainable customer acquisition costs.
This was not the first direct-to-consumer e-commerce company (DTC) in recent months, to reveal some very serious problems. In Maya Kosoff’s incisive analysis “Why All the Warby Parker Clones Are Now Imploding,” she connects the dots on other venture-backed DTC startups including Away, Harry’s, Casper, and now-shuttered Brandless, dismantling the economics of a category under pressure to grow at unnatural rates. “Perhaps the original mistake of the DTCs wasn’t in their vision,” she writes, “but in their decision to take the venture capital in the first place.”
Read: Why All the Warby Parker Clones Are Now Imploding
Don’t miss Marker’s other important reads from this week, including how the oil crash is impacting Silicon Valley, when it makes sense to have Co-CEOs, and why we may have officially reached Peak Subscription.
Until next week,
Executive Editor, Marker // Medium
