Outdoor Voices Sold to Consortium Brand Partners
Investment firm Consortium Brand Partners announced on Monday that it acquired athleisure brand Outdoor Voices on May 15 for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition comes three months after Sourcing Journal reported that the 10-year-old activewear startup was planning to file for bankruptcy. Once a hit among millennials for its colorful athleisure in its signature geometric patterns, Outdoor Voices eventually struggled to grow profitably. Entrepreneur Ashley Merrill acquired a majority stake in Outdoor Voices after founder Tyler Haney exited in 2020, and bailed the company out in 2022 with the intention of restructuring the business to achieve profitability. However, Outdoor Voices’ troubles persisted under Merrill. In March, the brand closed all of its 16 retail stores to focus solely on its e-commerce business, firing most of its corporate staff and missing vendor and rent payments, according to the Sourcing Journal report.
Consortium Brand Partners, which bought a majority stake in Reese Witherspoon’s clothing brand Draper James last September, has cleared all of Outdoor Voices’ debt, and Merrill has left the business, said Jonathan Greller, Consortium Brand Partners’ co-founder and president.
Total Retail's Take: Like many of its digital-native counterparts, Outdoor Voices struggled to grow profitably. While top-line sales grew rapidly, the startup brand's bottom line was being negatively impacted by rising online customer acquisition and supply chain/order fulfillment costs. A new owner will try to turn around Outdoor Voices' fortunes.
In a statement emailed to Total Retail, Juan Pellerano, chief marketing officer of Swap, a platform that enables e-commerce operations to manage shipping, tracking, insurance, and returns, offered his take on the Outdoor Voices news: "The acquisition by Consortium Brand Partners isn't surprising. This acquisition has likely been in the works for months on the heels of Outdoor Voices submitting for bankruptcy. This is CBP's first complete acquisition in the company’s history, after acquiring a 70 percent stake in Reese Witherspoon’s Draper James last year.
"Judging by its past public commentary and fund specialization, I would expect Outdoor Voice to pivot aggressively towards a wholesale strategy that the Consortium partners have a lot of experience in at Marquee Private Equity.
"This means you can expect Outdoor Voices to move to a fully DTC and wholesale business for the foreseeable future. I imagine it will be a crawl, walk, run approach to brick-and-mortar for quite some time.”
