Entrepreneur Ty Haney is best known for launching — and leaving — direct-to-consumer darling Outdoor Voices. But in March 2022, she re-emerged with Try Your Best, a platform that lets brands give customers digital rewards like NFTs or coins in exchange for feedback. Now, she’s using Try Your Best to debut a new line of energy supplements and other products designed to support an active lifestyle.

Set to launch in the coming days, Joggy uses cannabis ingredients including CBD and non-psychoactive THCV — known to potentially increase focus and suppress appetites — in a range of gummies and liquid supplements. There is also a topical balm, loaded up with CBD and arnica, that can be applied to sore muscles.

The idea, Haney told BoF, came from her own experimentation with CBD, and a desire to develop a product with reliable effectiveness and customised dosing. Joggy uses a water-based technology, instead of oil, to encapsulate the CBD, which she said gives it a purer potency and makes it faster-acting. The products that include THCV, a newly popular cannabinoid, are supposed to give the user a euphoric, energised feeling, while the CBD-focused items are meant to have a calming effect, both pre- and post-workout.

It’s a good time to enter the wellness market, with companies raising serious money. Vitamin supplement brand Athletic Greens, for instance, raised $115 million at a $1.2 billion valuation earlier this year. Plus, CBD and other cannabis-derived ingredients remain an easy sell.

But it’s not just about wellness. Prior to launch, Haney sold 500 “Joggy Doggy” collectible NFTs, featuring a dynamic pup bouncing around with a Frisbee in its mouth, for $250. While anyone can buy a Joggy product on the website, owning the NFT guarantees access to the Joggy community and a pile of perks. Owners receive a free product, the chance to beta test new items, a 20 percent discount and special access to limited editions. They’ll also get “special rewards,” which can include cash or tokens that they might someday be able to sell for a profit.

The two businesses are being built as one, with Joggy serving as an example for partners of how they can use Try Your Best. (So far, Haney has raised $2 million in seed funding.) There are currently 10 brands — including jewellery and eyewear-maker Vada and new spirits entrant Body Vodka — signed on to the platform and slated to launch within the next four months.

Haney likened the Joggy membership — which will also incorporate in-real-life events — to the early days of Outdoor Voices’ community building when followers of the brand had to attend an in-person get-together in order to land one of the highly coveted blue “Doing Things” caps. Now, those caps are NFTs.

These types of marketing activations can be far more effective at establishing long-term relationships with customers than paid online marketing, something on which direct-to-consumer brands have become dangerously reliant.

“[Paid acquisition] doesn’t net valuable customers,” Haney said. “Everybody now is focused on loyalty and retention. The future of brand building is in co-creation and incentivisation. There’s such a potential to unlock a better business [model].”

Haney isn’t afraid of NFT scepticism, noting that Try Your Best is built on the Avalanche blockchain, which is fast, efficient and a good entry point for consumers who have not dabbled in crypto or any other part of web3.

Joggy also marks Haney’s return to developing and selling physical product since exiting Outdoor Voices, the zeitgeist-y activewear company she founded in 2013. Haney first stepped down from her CEO role in early 2020, only to return a few months later as an advisor. January 2021 marked her final exit from the business — which she said remains poised to succeed, in part, because of the viability of the brand she and her team built.

While the late stages of her tenure there were weighed down with widely reported financial and operational challenges and investor tensions, her taste and ability to predict consumer trends were continuously praised. Joggy and Try Your Best employees include several of Haney’s longtime collaborators, including former Outdoor Voices creative director Tiffany Wilkinson, the new company’s chief creative officer.

With Joggy, Haney is once again marketing to whom she calls “the recreationalist” — an active, if not always overtly athletic, consumer. She said that the line is based on four principles: all products are meant for movement, should be plant-based (with a few necessary exceptions), technically credible and have personality. While she’s not making apparel right now, she is researching and testing hemp.

“I spent the last eight years in the synthetic world,” she said. “Looking back, I wish [Outdoor Voices] was able to get into the natural space more quickly, because that’s absolutely where the puck is going.”