Overview
Owners of the high-end athleisure label Alo have moved to divest Bella+Canvas, the wholesale T-shirt business they built decades earlier, in a transaction observers say could simplify Alo’s corporate structure and sharpen investor focus. The deal - which SanMar has agreed to buy for an undisclosed sum - was announced in mid-May but has not yet closed, and Alo’s co-founders have not publicly discussed whether the parent company will pursue a sale, a public offering or other strategic alternatives.
Why the divestiture matters
Industry analysts and M&A advisers argue the sale of Bella+Canvas removes a subsidiary that complicated the enterprise story for potential buyers or public investors. "Alo is a mature business, so it’s at the stage where you generally do something with it. You IPO it, you sell it off, you launch something else alongside it to grow another complementary area to Alo," said Neil Saunders, managing director at research firm GlobalData Retail. In short, stripping out Bella+Canvas could make Alo a purer high-end athleisure play, a configuration that is easier for investors to value and for boards or buyers to assess.
Background on the businesses
Bella+Canvas began in 1992 and was developed into a major supplier of T-shirts and apparel for wholesalers. Its founders, Danny Harris and Marco DeGeorge, later launched Alo in 2007 as a yoga apparel line. Over time Alo grew into the larger, higher-profile operation as its fashion and lifestyle positioning attracted celebrity attention. Public figures including Taylor Swift, Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber have been seen wearing Alo apparel.
While Bella+Canvas has been a steady revenue contributor to Color Image Apparel Inc., the parent that owns Alo, sources familiar with the company say Alo’s sales and earnings have since surpassed those of Bella+Canvas. The founders, who remain private and publicity-shy, have not disclosed plans for the proceeds from the sale or whether they will seek outside investors, but some comments in the Bella+Canvas announcement indicate a preference for a buyer that is family-owned rather than private equity-driven. "It was paramount to my partner and me that Bella+Canvas joins a privately held, family-owned company rather than private equity," DeGeorge said in the announcement.
Investor implications and prior outreach
Market participants note Alo has explored the capital markets before. In 2023 the company held talks with private equity and other potential investors as it sought a first institutional partner, with those discussions at the time suggesting a valuation in the neighborhood of $10 billion. No external investment was ultimately disclosed. Observers said Bella+Canvas complicated Alo’s investor narrative in those outreach efforts, leading some on Wall Street to view the wholesale T-shirt arm as dilutive to Alo’s appeal as a premium lifestyle brand.
"It makes sense to clean up the model and financials for investors," said Cristina Fernández, a managing director and senior research analyst at Telsey Advisory Group, summarizing why removing Bella+Canvas could be a logical step prior to a sale or an IPO.
How Alo is positioned now
Since its founding, Alo has expanded beyond leggings and yoga clothes into skincare, footwear, beauty and wellness categories. The brand has also moved further upmarket in its product assortment - including a $3,600 leather duffel introduced last year - and operates more than 150 stores worldwide. Some locations host yoga studios, and Alo runs an invite-only gym at its Beverly Hills headquarters where its best-selling leggings, priced above $100, are a focal product.
Analysts describe Alo as an aspirational, higher-end brand that targets affluent consumers. "Alo is a little more exclusive and higher end with stronger ties to luxury that really speak to the affluent or highly aspirational consumer," said Sky Canaves, a principal analyst at Emarketer, who also pointed to campaigns with high-luxury imagery to reach that audience.
Market context and competition
The athleisure category expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers embraced comfort-oriented apparel for working at home. That surge encouraged new entrants and accelerated growth for established players. Since then, demand has normalized with some shoppers reverting to more formal or denim-centric wardrobes as workplaces and social routines shifted back toward pre-pandemic patterns. "[Athleisure] certainly peaked during the pandemic. Since then, it has lost a little bit of its casualwear share and a lot of that is due to the huge resurgence we’ve seen in denim," Sky Canaves said, adding that the market is moving toward normalization in the U.S.
Alo competes directly with market leader Lululemon as well as younger brands such as Vuori, Fabletics and Gymshark, which have been pursuing growth trajectories that in several cases included exploring initial public offerings. Lululemon in particular has experienced difficulties in recent quarters, prompting internal conflict between founder Chip Wilson and the company’s board. The dispute was settled last month after a period of public recrimination, and Lululemon’s stock had fallen around 50% year-to-date into the period described in this analysis, cutting its market valuation to roughly $12 billion.
Strategic choices ahead
With Bella+Canvas under agreement to be sold, Alo’s leadership will have options that range from preparing the company for a public offering to pursuing a private sale or investing in adjacent categories to create new growth engines. Founders Harris and DeGeorge have built Color Image Apparel without outside institutional investors and have expressed a preference for family-owned buyers in the Bella+Canvas deal announcement; how that preference will shape choices for Alo itself remains unclear.
Industry participants note founder-owned companies commonly bring institutional partners on before an IPO to set valuation benchmarks that can frame public-market expectations. But listing without such partners is also a path some founder-led companies take. Analysts emphasize that removing the wholesale T-shirt business could make Alo’s revenue base and margin profile easier to analyze for potential public investors or buyers, improving comparability and reducing the cognitive load in valuation discussions.
Conclusion
The sale of Bella+Canvas - once closed - would mark a notable restructuring of the enterprises built by Harris and DeGeorge, paring back a familiar but smaller business to leave a more focused, high-end athleisure brand that is easier to position for investors or acquirers. Whether Alo’s owners choose a public listing, a private sale, or another path, the divestiture alters the company’s shape and could materially affect how prospective investors and buyers assess its growth prospects and unit economics in a market that has both normalized and grown more crowded since the height of pandemic-era demand.
Sources quoted within this report include public statements by the parties involved and analysis from industry experts cited by name.