You were telling us at the break. You've been at the company a long time,

and in your time, I think you said 17, 18 years in that time.

How has the company evolved into what it is now?

Yeah, I've been at the company almost two decades, and when I joined, we were

a surf skate legacy retailer. And today, after a transformation of

almost two decades and a real focus on the power of co-creation, we have

successfully moved from being a retailer where Paxton's brand was just on the

outside of the store to an actual brand that young people today love.

And so 50% of what we sell in a PacSun store today now carries the same label.

How does that work in a world where and look, I'm going to totally age myself

here. We've already if we're both there, you

know when I, when I, when I drop my kids off at school, they're young, they're

three and seven. But when I drop them off at school, I

walk by a middle school. And at the middle school, these kids

literally are dressing like we used to dress when we were in middle school.

It is crazy. It's like, yeah, the wide leg jeans.

Like the same oversized Sweatshirts like the platform chunky sandals.

Here's the difference, though. They're all glued to iPhones and we

didn't have that know. And we didn't have that until relatively

recently. Again, not today myself.

Um, how do you reach a consumer that is glued to their phone?

So as a brand centered at the youth. I actually think all of these

touchpoints, from a digital standpoint, offer us a real advantage.

If you lean in and meet the customer where they are.

Paxton has 2 million followers on TikTok.

We're on Reddit. We're on discord on IG.

There's so many different ways to engage with the consumer today.

YouTube shorts. And so I talk about it as this constant

listening loop and listening feedback. If you want to know something in live

time, you can just engage with the consumer.

And so the premise of my book co-created is really about treating the consumer

not like an audience. We're not marketing to them.

We're not building product to then market to them instead on the reverse.

We're building with them. So we've brought the consumer in and we

are actually co-creating the future of our brand with these young people.

How does that work in the creator economy?

We've seen so many brands kind of fumble those opportunities.

Is there a specific strategy to taking advantage of people who are exciting

about the brand and bringing them in in a way that feels not exploitative, but,

um, you know, communal and productive? Yeah, I think we've had tremendous

success in the creator economy. And really, the brand has to shift the

notion of control. So you have to relinquish.

But that's really hard. You get paid to have control.

We have to relinquish some of that control and build what I call brand and

community trust. And so by empowering these young people

to be your storyteller, you were, in essence, enabling them not only to

create economic ability for themselves, but also to story, tell and amplify in a

way that is otherwise impossible. And in 2023, a PacSun fan and customer,

Lela Burks, based in Nashville, Tennessee, who had just amassed 5000

followers on TikTok, went to her local Nashville store, bought a pair of jeans,

created a video in her bedroom. She has 5000 followers.

She sold 11,000 pairs of jeans in the next 36 hours.

And so it's the power of the algorithm. It's the power of authentic storytelling

and really allowing to lean into your into your community and empower them.

So on that, if you look at the PacSun website right now, there's, you know, a

dozen vertical videos that, uh, talk about it, says Paxton, styled by you.

Are these coming from. How does this work?

Like are these are these collaborations that you have with like actually actual

normal people? Are these like, thought up in a

marketing department and they're like made to look like they'd see vertical

video. Like, are these actually, like Coke?

Like co-create? The majority of the videos you would see

on our site are actually co-creation. So then we seek permission from those

creators. Like folks will tag you and then you

reach out. Absolutely.

And on TikTok, with the Open Creator platform, we actually don't select any

of the people who are then advocating or promoting the brand they are selecting,

and we say everyone is welcome and there's a real magic and synergy that

happens in that. We're speaking with Brianne Olson, the

CEO of PacSun. She's the author of the new book,

co-created the cultural strategy that redefined Paxson.

Christina's got her weight. I'm looking at her on camera.

And. Sorry, it's not my studio.

There it is. There it is.

Talk to us about how you manage a brand turnaround.

Because the company did file for bankruptcy in 2016 and you were there.

You were there pre bankruptcy and post and retail turnarounds are hard.

Um, partially because you do have a legacy that can be either a good or a

bad thing. Reinvention can be really difficult when

customers have a certain way they think about your brand.

How do you do that? How did you manage that and how do you

think it's been successful? So I've been in the CEO role just over

three years now, and I've been with the brand 18 plus years.

And so the turnaround I would say was absolutely a team effort and as you'll

see in the book, co-created the fingerprints and the stories of so many

different people, brands, creators and, you know, leaders within our

organization and our brand associates are a part of this beautiful story of

co-creation. But the real, honest truth is you have

to do the inside work first. And we had to do a lot of re scrubbing

of our structure, our internal organization, our operating system, how

quickly we were getting product to market, the silos that had existed in

our organization for a long time. And we did that by leading with purpose.

And I think a purpose led brand can perform better.

And our results have followed from the moment we established our purpose, which

is to inspire the next generation of youth and create community at the

intersection of fashion, sport, art and music.

We have really been able to rally both our internal teams and our external

constituents, which include our community, brands, creators, all of the

stakeholders. I want to talk about some of those

stakeholders. Just that you just mentioned the brand

specifically if. 50% of what you're selling is packs

unlabeled? And then how do you ensure the brands

that they're going to be given? Um, you know, both virtually and

physically shelf space that has prominence?

Yeah, I think listening to the consumer leveraging data, leveraging our Youth

Advisory Council, leveraging our Packs on Youth report, which surveyed 6000

young people. These are ways that we can listen in a

more efficient way. And then ensuring that we're being true

to our purpose and our pillars. So we have a long standing relationship

with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The misconception is that young people

don't care about the arts, but what we've been able to prove year after year

is that actually, young people don't care about arts, and they care about the

fine arts and they care about self-expression.

And so we were very confident that this collaboration and co-creation would work

similar to Formula One. It's hot now, but we started working

with Formula One almost four and a half, five years ago, So I think really

ensuring that we're staying at the pace of culture and we're moving at the speed

of culture ensures that we stay that one step ahead and ensures relevancy for the

products and brands that we curate and bring into our store.

You said you have a annual youth report. What are some of the surprising

takeaways when you read that report each year?

What are some of the things that stand out that surprised you even though

you've been this business? Yeah.

So last year in the youth Report serving 6000 young people, Gen Alpha and Gen Z.

One of the things that came out was that music is the most important piece of

their life in terms of self-expression and fashion.

And so it ranks higher than fashion. And so I think music is this through

line for people to express themselves. And it's variable and fluid, right.

So I think that was a big, um, kind of unlock.

Another unlock was mental health. And mental health was both the largest

challenge, but also opportunity when you spoke to young people about physical

health and academia, but if you really look at it, I think it actually shows

true optimism because these younger generations are willing to lean in.

They're vulnerable. They're having the conversations, and

they want to have the conversation also in the workplace.

And so I think it's giving us an opportunity as brands and corporations

to really rethink our social responsibility.

And how does that tie into our corporate responsibility.

And so I think the youth report from a data standpoint and deeply understanding

the emotive reasons that consumers are shifting their buying patterns, shifting

consumption patterns was absolutely important to kind of strategizing our

path forward. We're going to talk more.

We're going to do some news, and then we'll come back and talk more with you.

Uh, before we do that, though, I want to talk and we'll talk retail.

Before we do that, though, I just want to go back to marketing and and hear

from you about the mix of organic marketing versus paid.

Can you just give us like, what percentage goes is organic?

What percentage is paid. We're at a pretty even 5050 split.

Okay. And we did bring all of our paid teams

in-house, so we're not leveraging any agent.

That's interesting. And that is a big pivot and has proven

to have significant results because the people working on the team are living

and breathing the brand and listening to our consumers.

So I think that's the biggest fundamental shift that we've made.

And then what are they doing on social media to find those those reliable

voices, those people you want to partner with?

I think first, the first level of partnership is looking at who's already

talking about your brand because they are the authentic storytellers.

So that is usually our first step in identifying a collaborator or

co-creator. Okay, we got a few more minutes with

you. I want to talk retail.

I want to talk about the future of the company.

Let's start with with retail. Uh, unlike some other companies in the

last few years who have decreased their retail footprint, uh, brick and mortar

footprint, I should say. You guys are actually opening stores.

You opened ten last year. You're opening ten this year.

What is what is the way to get consumers into the store?

How do you do it? I think first of all, we open in areas

in malls where we already have a high demand.

So we look at the data. I mean, there are fewer malls now.

So like there's so many malls that don't exist anymore.

There are empty malls. I think there's about 450 really great

malls in the US, and we're only in 305 of them.

So when I look at the white space for expansion, where there's real customer

demand for a packed sun, there's still quite a bit of runway there for us.

And we saw last year our store traffic in our malls at Paxton was up 17%.

And so clearly consumers are voting for Paxton.

They want us to open stores and they're looking for experiential retail.

So whether that's us showing up trackside at Formula One in Austin or in

Miami, where it's unexpected, Paxton has a pop up store at the track or it's what

we're doing with Get Ready With Me the night before New Year's Eve and getting

our consumers ready. We're bringing them in and meeting them

where they are in their lives at that moment.

When did the name change from Paxton from Pacific Sun?

More to Pakistan? About 15 years ago.

All right. So that's how well, that's I mean, I

always call it Paxson. Did you call it the whole thing?

Yeah, I mean, that's what it was called. There's a fine line that actually.

Oh there is yeah, there's a nostalgic throwback.

And younger people think it's really fun that we used to be called Pacific

somewhere. So we've brought it out.

I'm it smells and there's other capsules and it's been great.

When you look at appealing to this youth customer you were talking about in your

survey, how they do care about the sorts of things they do care about arts, they

do care about ethics. I feel like that runs into a couple

other market trends, including this love of like, fast fashion.

So how do you how do you have those two competing wins?

How do you make sure that you are keeping that genuineness and that

ingenuity and that uniqueness, and then also providing the number of items and

the churn that these customers want? I think, first of all, we have to

acknowledge that the consumer is under some price pressures and cost pressures.

And I think by acknowledging that, you also acknowledge that they might at some

point shop at a brand that might be considered fast fashion, but that at

PacSun is not what we stand for. We stand for quality first and foremost,

creating real, exclusive product that means something to them and will last in

their closet and giving it to them at the best value that we can.

And so we recognize that fast. You know, the fast fashion shopping

might be a part of that ecosystem, but we don't play into that lane packs on.

Before we go, we got to talk business. PacSun was a publicly traded company in

the 1990s. It it IPO.

It went private and then filed for bankruptcy back in 2016.

Are you on the path right now to become a public company again?

We're certainly exploring that option. Uh, are you profitable now?

We're profitable. We just came in near $1 billion last

year. That was from 700 plus million.

That's hot eight years prior. Top line billion dollars.

So really exciting to see the growth. And the growth has been nice and steady

over the last three years. And we're seeing the growth across both

genders and across a multitude of great brands, inclusive of the on brand.