As venture-backed brands collapse and scramble for reinvention, the California surf and apparel label has spent 20 years building something harder to replicate than a pitch deck: a loyal customer base that actually believes in the product.

Earlier this month, Allbirds announced it was pivoting from sustainable footwear and rebranding as an artificial intelligence infrastructure company called NewBird AI. The move came weeks after the brand sold its intellectual property and footwear assets for $39 million , a fraction of the more than $4 billion valuation it briefly commanded on its first day of trading after its 2021 IPO. Between 2022 and 2025, Allbirds saw sales fall nearly 50%, from $298 million to $152 million .

The announcement sent shares surging more than 600% in a single day, then crashing 35% the next morning , as investors digested the reality of a shoe company trying to compete against AI infrastructure giants with $50 million in funding against CoreWeave’s $30 billion budget.

Allbirds is not alone. In 2025, Liberated Brands, operator of Billabong, Quiksilver and Volcom retail stores, filed for bankruptcy, closing all 122 locations and laying off more than 1,000 employees. Forever 21 filed for Chapter 11 for the second time in six years, closing more than 350 U.S. stores. Parade, the once-buzzy direct-to-consumer underwear startup that raised $40 million in venture capital, shut down in October 2025 .

Against that backdrop, a women’s apparel brand based in Northern California has been doing something unusual: nothing dramatic at all.

Carve Designs , co-founded more than 20 years ago by Thayer Sylvester and Jennifer Hinton, has not taken venture capital, nor chased a viral moment. It has simply continued making swimwear and apparel for women who surf, hike and move, sourcing organic cotton and recycled polyester long before either was a marketing strategy, and expanding only when the right partnerships presented themselves.

The Rejection That Redirected Everything

The early years were not without setbacks. When Sylvester and Hinton launched the brand, they assumed their first customers would be the surf shops lining the California coast. Those sun-bleached retail institutions had always been the launchpad for West Coast outdoor brands.

The shops were not interested, however. The reason, Sylvester recalled, was a revealing one.

“They equated athletic board shorts for women with unfit, older, unattractive women,” she said. “There was a stigma against clothes that actually worked for athletes.”

For a less patient brand, that rejection might have led to compromise: chasing trends, cutting prices or reshaping the product to fit a channel that didn’t want it. Instead, the founders pivoted toward retailers whose values matched their own. Patagonia and The North Face came first, then Athleta, and eventually a carefully selected group of wholesale partners. Each relationship was less a distribution deal than a signal of where Carve Designs belonged in the larger conversation about quality, fit and sustainability in activewear.

That patience, years later, began to look prescient. Some of the surf shops that turned them away became part of the Liberated Brands portfolio that collapsed into bankruptcy in early 2025.

Built on Values, Not Campaigns

The company was sourcing sustainable materials before the rest of the industry, even some of the pioneers in sustainable fashion.

“When we first started, what we said is that as we built the business, we wanted to create a culture that was reflective of our own personal values,” she said. “Our personal values included things like choosing to eat organic food and trying to be healthy. It wasn’t necessarily that we set out to say, ‘We’re going to make sustainable clothing.’ That wasn’t even really a thing back then.”

When Carve Designs launched its T-shirt line, the founders chose to source certified organic cotton from a mill in North Carolina. In a meeting with a buyer who questioned the decision, Sylvester’s response was characteristically direct.

“I said, ‘Well, do you eat organic apples? And do you ask what the point is of doing that? It’s better for the earth to have less pesticides.’ For us, it was just the right choice.”

Nearly a decade ago, that same conviction led Carve Designs to adopt recycled polyester for its swimwear line. At the time, fabric made from reclaimed plastic bottles and post-consumer waste was a genuine differentiator in the activewear market. Today, it is a standard industry talking point. Sylvester says they were among the first, not because of a trend report, but because they believed in it.

For Carve Designs, two decades in, the message has not changed. In 2024, Sylvester said, 97% of the collection met the brand’s sustainability standards.

The Hard Work of Getting There

Reaching that figure was not easy. For swimwear in particular, sourcing sustainable materials required years of development work.

“In swimwear, it essentially didn’t exist,” Sylvester said. “My head of production and I flew to China, where we source our materials, and we sat down with our mill and explained what we wanted to do. It took us about two and a half years to develop the fabric to a place where we felt like you’d want it next to your skin.”

The same iterative patience applied to product development. In the early days, Sylvester and Hinton held what they called wine fitting parties, inviting women to their apartment, pouring a glass of wine and handing out feedback forms.

“In order to be here with your free wine, you need to fill out these forms,” Sylvester said, laughing. “It allows for you to have a better product versus just trying it on one single model who has a perfect body.”

The practice never stopped. The company still conducts wear tests today, now with larger and more diverse groups of women across body types, ages and activity levels.

Using AI, Not Becoming It

Carve Designs is not ignoring artificial intelligence. It is incorporating it in a way that feels consistent with how the brand has always operated.

The brand has begun using AI tools to reduce material waste in design and production, addressing one of the apparel industry’s most persistent inefficiencies: the gap between what is cut and what ends up in the finished garment. Pattern optimization, demand forecasting and inventory planning are unglamorous backstage problems, but solving them is what separates brands that actually reduce waste from brands that merely discuss it.

Sylvester’s next ambition goes further still. She wants to close the loop entirely on the swimwear Carve Designs has spent years producing.

“All of our swimwear is made from plastic bottles,” she said. “The technology has become better recently where you can then recycle that into turf pellets for turf fields, so that it wouldn’t stay as a garment but you’re downcycling it. Right now it’s really just all going into the landfill, and that is upsetting.”

The Case for the Long Game

There is a certain irony in the fact that the most radical thing Carve Designs ever did was refuse to grow too fast.

In the startup culture of the 2010s, venture-backed brands cycled through the activewear space at a dizzying pace: millions raised, millions burned, and then the quiet shutdown or the fire-sale acquisition. Parade raised $40 million i n venture capital and folded anyway. Allbirds raised $303 million in its IPO and sold its core business for $39 million . The brands that survived that cycle often did so by gutting what made them interesting in the first place.

Sylvester, who grew up in a manufacturing family in northeastern Ohio and watched her father run his own business, said she has always been clear about what kind of company she wanted to build.

“You just have to stay true to your brand and authentic with your messaging, and not worry too much about the competition,” she said. “You’ve got to feel good about what you’re doing.”

In late 2025, Sylvester and Hinton decided the time had come to find a partner who could help Carve Designs scale. The company was acquired by Charles Komar & Sons, Inc. in December 2025 . Both founders remain at the helm.

“From the outset, it was clear that we share deeply aligned values, an unwavering commitment to people, a long-standing dedication to sustainability, and a belief in building brands with purpose and integrity,” Sylvester said in a statement at the time. “Komar provides a powerful platform for growth, with the resources and global reach to help Carve Designs expand thoughtfully while staying true to who we are.”

Through the partnership, Carve Designs will use Komar’s global sourcing, manufacturing and distribution infrastructure. The Carve Designs leadership team will continue to guide the brand’s creative direction and day-to-day operations.

In a market full of companies desperately searching for the next reinvention, consistency and slow steady growth turns out to be the most durable competitive advantage of all, she says. While Sylvester and Hinton have had their fair share of challenges (as bad as a container falling of a ship during transport, and the recent tariffs that affected their India-based supply chain), they’ve continued to be tenacious.

“You cannot give up. You have to be a problem-solving person who finds solutions daily, and keeps going to be successful in business. We haven’t had one ‘easy’ year since we started to be honest,” Sylvester notes.