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Today: Lanny Smith’s Actively Black, the apparel startup that’s something extra. Smith, who started his company in 2020, has grown Actively Black into a multimillion-dollar brand with just three employees (including himself). Read on to learn:
How Actively Black fosters a supportive relationship with the Black community it seeks to serve
Why Smith just launched an app as a small fashion brand
What he’s done to make Actively Black’s product better than the global conglomerates he’s competing against
How important is it to you that the brands you support share your values? Let me know at [email protected].
Actively Black’s Multimillion-Dollar Athleisure Brand Builds Community First, Then Apparel
Co-founder and CEO Lanny Smith wasn’t content ‘competing for closet space.’ He’s taking back the culture.
BY JAMIL SMITH
Lanny Smith of Actively Black. Photography by Ryan E. Young
When she was only 6 years old, Ruby Bridges walked to school in November 1960 and made history. Dressed for her first day at what was, until that moment, an all-White elementary school in New Orleans, federal marshals flanked her as she made her way through a phalanx of people spitting racism at her. It was such an all-American image that Norman Rockwell painted it.
Bridges was 71 in September of this year when she walked through a considerably friendlier crowd. Emerging on the catwalk at New York Fashion Week between two large images of her younger self—including the Rockwell painting—Bridges smiled widely as she walked in her black hoodie dress.
Civil rights legends don’t often model in high-profile fashion shows. However, the theme for Actively Black’s event was “This Is Not a Fashion Show.” And it is clear that the five-year-old Los Angeles-based athleisure label aims to transform the word brand in ways that have meaning beyond a bottom line.
“When I think about the amount of revenue, profit, and brand capital that’s generated from Black culture—that was part of the inspiration for launching Actively Black,” says Lanny Smith, 41, co-founder and CEO. The idea was “for us to actually have ownership of our culture that everybody else profits from.”
That might be enough if “competing for that closet space,” as Smith puts it, were his only aim. Actively Black got off to a great start, after all: Over $1 million in revenue during its first six months, reaching as high as $8 million in 2023; it made $5.7 million in revenue in 2024. One of the brand’s timepieces, a collaboration with Teleport Watches, sold out after it was seen on Barack Obama’s wrist in a 2022 Instagram post. In 2024, Actively Black dressed Nigeria’s Olympic team.
The company’s success is breathtaking, especially as it has only three full-time employees: Smith, his mother, Alfreda, and his co-founder and partner, Bianca Winslow, who is expecting the couple’s first child. No matter how many hats the team wears, their priority is to use fashion to uplift. The brand regularly reinvests in the Black community, with Compton Girls Club, Between the Lines, and Black Girls Code among the nonprofits it supports.
Going beyond the brand has been Smith’s driving force since he first ventured into fashion. After playing hoops at the University of Houston, he signed as an undrafted free agent with the NBA’s Sacramento Kings in 2009. Thirty-three days later, a knee injury ended his basketball career and birthed another: Active Faith Sports, a sports apparel company. “When I was injured and my NBA dream ended, I went into a really dark place,” he says. “Active Faith gave me purpose when I didn’t want to get out of bed.”
It was successful, if not in the way Smith anticipated. Though the company made about $100,000 in revenue the first year, Smith says the majority of its customers were White Evangelical Christians. “I was intentionally hiding from people knowing I was the founder,” he says, “because I thought it would negatively impact the business.”
Seeing Black Panther in 2018 inspired him. He wanted to create something unapologetically Black, he says, “something that affirms who we are.” For Actively Black, he invested in premium cotton materials that “matched or surpassed what customers had come to expect” from brands like Nike and Adidas. The brand was a hit.
Now it’s poised for its next level of growth: Besides expanding into baby apparel and medical uniforms, Smith launched the Actively Black app in November, which “houses the retail platform, exclusive content, and community spaces,” he says. “We’re intentionally leveraging AI and automation wherever possible to run the app efficiently.” Smith is also developing Actively Black Media to produce original content and be a platform for Black creators.
“Lanny’s not an apparel brand,” says Actively Black adviser Jeron Smith, a marketing veteran who helped lead digital strategy for the Obama White House. “He’s a community builder who happens to be monetizing through apparel. But ultimately, he builds community.”