Thayer Sylvester: Co-Founder & CEO of Carve Designs – Pioneering an Iconic American Lifestyle Brand

As part of the Morning Lazziness series about empowering women who encourage and do incredible things with their ideas in society, I had the pleasure of interviewing Thayer Sylvester.

Thayer co-founded Carve in 2003. As the Chief Executive Officer, she is focused on Carve becoming an iconic American lifestyle brand. Thayer’s operating motto is to make data-driven decisions across all functional areas. She has successfully grown the business into an omnichannel, nationally known swimwear and apparel brand. 

Prior to founding Carve, she served as a Managing Director for Alpine Investors, LLC, a mid-market private equity firm for whom she managed a portfolio of companies. There, she specialized in financial planning and analysis, implementing sales and operations processes and strategic plans. Thayer launched her career at The Gillette Company in its undergraduate management training program. 

Thayer grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Thayer lives with her family in Northern California and is actively involved in her children’s schools and Compass San Francisco, a non-profit focused on preventing homelessness. She loves to surf and is an avid world traveler.

Here’s what we found out about Thayer’s daily routine, followed by an exclusive Q+A.

Can you share the story behind your journey as an entrepreneur? What inspired you to start your own business? 

I started my career within a large consumer product company at Procter and Gamble. I found it enormously frustrating that you could not influence change. Even when you identified something inefficient or flat-out not working, changing anything was unbelievably difficult. That drove me crazy. From then on, I always wanted to work on my own, because then as soon as you identify something’s wrong you can fix it. Fast forward to when I was on a surf trip to San Pancho, Mexico with my co-founder Jennifer Hinton. As we lounged in a hammock waiting for the waves to roll back in, we lamented how hard it was to find boardshorts that could keep up with us – real women with real bodies and a real passion for adventure. This led us to Carve Designs. While we started as a surf apparel company selling rash guards and boardshorts in 2003, we have grown into a complete beach lifestyle brand.

What challenges have you faced as a woman in the business world, and how have you overcome them?

Particularly in fashion or apparel, people sometimes view this space as not very serious or not business minded. Some think we’re just kind of playing Barbie doll dress-up. I’ve always approached it as “How do we create and scale successful, profitable business?” When people make assumptions about the type of business that you’re growing, it can feel like they’re undermining what you’re doing. I consistently approach those conversations with a lot of confidence and knowledge that we’re running a great business and never let the detractors get me down.

How do you balance your professional and personal life as an entrepreneur? 

You just have to make it happen. It’s easy to let work take over your life. What you realize is that leads to creating an unbalance. You perform better when you maintain balance in your life. I always make room to exercise, volunteer, take a vacation, and raise my kids. Lately, I’m addicted to F45. It’s super fun with a great community there with people of all ages and it keeps you fit.

What strategies have you found most effective for networking and building connections in your industry? 

It’s important to put yourself out there. You have to attend conferences to meet people in your field. Then after the event, make sure you follow up and nurture those new contacts into meaningful relationships. Particularly, I’ve enjoyed attending Shoptalk events in the past and connecting with retail changemakers.

How do you approach mentorship and seeking guidance in your entrepreneurial journey? 

When you meet somebody that you’re impressed with, you can’t be afraid to ask them for help. Typically, entrepreneurs like to help other people. They know personally how difficult the journey is. Then, they can become your mentors. I’ve found myself finding mentors and in return serving as a mentor to different people across different spaces of the business.

Can you talk about a specific setback or failure you’ve experienced in your business, and how you bounced back from it? 

I think the hardest thing in any business is hiring the right people. And from time to time we don’t hire the right person, learning to recognize that quickly and having open dialog around why a certain person is not the right fit is critical to the organization’s success, and then moving on and hiring the right person.

How do you prioritize diversity and inclusion within your company or startup?

The vast majority of our employees are young women who are of child-rearing years. These women have typically been marginalized in the workplace, either being prevented from climbing the corporate ladder or from being given bigger roles, because employers assume their attention is divided between their full-time job and raising their children. We work very hard to keep women in the workplace and do everything we can to support their motherhood. We also recognize that it’s hugely important for them to contribute to the workforce for their economic independence and for the greater cause of having women achieve better equality.

How do you stay motivated and resilient during tough times in your business? 

You make sure that you have downtime. Whenever it gets challenging, it’s important to take time to meditate, take time to exercise, take time to go for a walk with a girlfriend, or whatever it is that diverts your focus away from the business to then have the best focus when you’re working on it.

What advice would you give to other aspiring women entrepreneurs who are just starting out? 

It’s important to create achievable goals and then hold yourself accountable to those goals. If you’re not able to achieve them, ask yourself why or why not. An achievable goal is not to start a business and sell and achieve a million or billion dollars worth of revenue in a year. Instead, it might be “My goal in the next six months is to sell $25,000 or $100,000” and then from there, you set up another bigger goal. If you miss a goal, then really look at what prevented you from missing that goal and why.

Can you share a memorable success or milestone that you’ve achieved in your entrepreneurial career? 

The pandemic was super challenging for everyone. Carve Designs was not spared its challenges early on. In March 2020, 80% of our revenue was canceled for the remainder of the year. Nevertheless, we were able to navigate through that and have come past that challenge. We are now exceeding our revenue from prior to the pandemic and have kept the lights on.