Outdoor Voices is back from the dead, returning to a market they essentially created but no longer control. It’s a cautionary tale every founder should study, because it perfectly illustrates two critical inflection points in any business: when your breakthrough innovation becomes everyone’s baseline, and when your market hits saturation before you realize it.
Let’s break down what happened and what it means for your business.
The Innovation Trap: When Everyone Copies Your Playbook
Remember when Outdoor Voices was revolutionary? Tyler Haney created an entirely new category: clothes for “doing things” that weren’t necessarily working out.
Her innovations were brilliant and specific:
- Making tennis dresses acceptable for hiking Runyon Canyon and grabbing matcha
- Creating community vibes at retail locations with classes and events
- Positioning activewear as an all-day uniform, not just gym clothes
- Building a brand around lifestyle integration rather than performance metrics
But here’s the founder’s dilemma: every successful innovation eventually becomes table stakes.
Today, those breakthrough ideas are commonplace. Leggings with blazers are everywhere. Retail locations double as community hubs. Every activewear brand positions itself around lifestyle integration. Outdoor Voices created the playbook, then watched competitors like Alo Yoga, Vuori, and Beyond Yoga execute it better, faster, and with more capital.
The lesson for founders: Your competitive advantage has an expiration date. The question isn’t whether competitors will copy you, it’s how long you have before they do, and what you’re building next.
Reading the Saturation Signals
While Outdoor Voices was watching their innovations get commoditized, something else was happening: the entire activewear market was hitting saturation. The signs were there for anyone paying attention.
Signal #1: The Core Product Decline Leggings sales dropped from nearly 50% of activewear bottoms three years ago to just 40% today. When your category’s hero product starts declining that’s a market reality check.
Signal #2: The “Everyone Has Enough” Moment As the analysis perfectly puts it: “The market reality is that everyone has enough basic black leggings in their drawer.” When customers stop buying your core product not because they don’t like it, but because they already own it, you’ve hit market saturation.
Signal #3: The Desperation Pivot Watch what market leaders do when they feel the squeeze. Lululemon’s latest offerings feel “more Skims-lite than sporty.” When the category king starts abandoning their positioning, the writing is on the wall.
Signal #4: The Innovation Shift Brands are now competing on material innovation rather than brand innovation. Outdoor Voices is rolling out bubble-wrap compression technology. Lululemon removed center seams from Align leggings. Vuori tweaked their color palette. When everyone’s fighting over fabric technology instead of brand positioning, the market has matured.
The Founder’s Playbook for Market Evolution
1. Monitor Your Innovation Lag Time Track how quickly competitors adopt your breakthrough features. If it used to take 18 months and now takes 6, your market is accelerating toward commoditization.
2. Watch Customer Buying Patterns Are customers buying less frequently? Switching between brands more easily? These are early saturation signals, not just competitive pressure.
3. Study the Stuck-in-the-Middle Players Look at Athleta’s position: priced lower than Lululemon and Vuori but with no real differentiation. Their comp store sales dropped 8% in Q1 2025. When brands get trapped between premium and mass market with no clear value proposition, the middle is getting squeezed out.
4. Recognize the Mass Market Moment Old Navy became the #5 activewear brand. When mass market players start winning significant share, your premium positioning is under threat. Price becomes the differentiator when product parity arrives.
What Happens Next
Smart founders prepare for three post-peak scenarios:
Scenario 1: The R&D Race When brand differentiation fails, product differentiation takes over. Invest in genuine innovation; materials, construction, technology, not just marketing innovation.
Scenario 2: The Niche Retreat Find underserved segments within your broader market. While everyone fights over the mainstream, profitable niches often emerge.
Scenario 3: The Category Exit Sometimes the smartest move is strategic. Alo Yoga was reportedly seeking a $10 billion valuation two years ago but may have missed their window. Knowing when to sell is as important as knowing when to scale.
The Real Lesson
Outdoor Voices’ story represemts market timing and innovation cycles. They created something genuinely new, others copied it, and the market matured faster than anyone expected.
The uncomfortable truth for founders: your innovation will become everyone’s baseline, and your market will eventually saturate. The winners are those who see these shifts coming and adapt before they’re forced to.
The question isn’t whether this will happen to your business. The question is whether you’ll recognize the signals in time to do something about it.
xx,
Camille
P.S. I break down my exact method for branding and socials in my Masterclass. This is the same framework I use with some of the biggest brands in the world. Or if you need 1:1 support, I offer consulting calls here.