The Pacsun CEO shares the brand’s playbook for viral growth and creative partnerships.
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Brieane Olson, CEO of Pacsun, on how the brand harnesses youth culture, social listening, and artist partnerships to drive viral success. From the breakout Casey Jean moment to Post Malone collabs, Brieane shares how Pacsun stays culturally relevant while empowering the next generation of creators.
About Pacsun
Pacsun inspires the next generation of youth, building community at the intersection of fashion, music, art, and sport. Co-created in Los Angeles.
Founded in 1980 as Pacific Sunwear, the Pacsun brand has evolved well beyond beachwear. Today, Pacsun is a leading lifestyle brand offering an exclusive collection of the most relevant brands and styles to a community of inspired youth. In its fleet of over 350 stores and on Pacsun.com, customers will find brands such as Formula 1, The Met, UFC, Brandy Melville, J. Galt, and Fear of God ESSENTIALS, in addition to the best-selling Pacsun brand.
Pacsun is dedicated to being a leader in delivering high-quality product, relevant retail experiences, and unique digital content. As an organization, Pacsun is inspired and led by the diversity of its customers and associates. Through the PacCares program, the brand is committed to using its platform to drive change and take action on the issues important to its community.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. Alright, so today is a very special episode. We have. Brianne Olson on the line, and she’s CEO over at Paxon.
And this particular episode is part of our Milken Global Conference coverage series. That’s a mouthful. That’s where we bring together the top, the best of the Milken Global Conference. That’s people that attended the conference, that participated as speakers, VIPs, and panelists. So all of the above.
And first thing, first, Brianne, welcome to the show. I. Thank you so much Adam. Appreciate, have you having me on. All right, Bri, so we, we got a lot to talk about today. I definitely want to talk about your views on building a viral brand and what you’re doing over at Paxon. So I know things like music have become a core pillar of paxon and also want to get your, input on some of those major viral.
Product moments, some things like your Casey Jeans. So we’ll get into that. But before we get into PacSun and some of the other content, I do wanna know about your experience at the Milken Global Conference. So, I mean I’ve been going a couple years now. This is like my Super Bowl conferences, I like to say.
How was your experience? My experience was fantastic. I really enjoyed my time there. I was a speaker at the conference and as well attended multi-day sessions and really enjoyed the quality of people that I was able to meet. The types of topics that we really were diving into, and just the currency of having them be very current and tied to what was happening in the major events happening in the economy and at the global scale.
Mm. Now have you been in the past or was this the first time to the conference? I’m just curious on that side. Yeah, this is my first time attending and speaking at the conference, so it was pretty special. Oh, I love it. So a new, a new a newcomer. I love it. It’s so, it’s fun. I know that year over year, it’s interesting ’cause you see some of the same people come and it’s really become a, a community.
So I, I’d love to get your perspective. , I’m based on, your history, your role, and obviously your position at Pakistan. You can go to. Other conferences have access to many things. Did you, was something a little different about this one? Like anything different that you noticed that’s incredibly well organized?
I think really current in terms of really taking a, a quick and steady look at what’s happening today in the moment and getting really insightful voices in the same room. Saw from the community was incredibly impressive. The quality of speakers also equally impressive and the dialogue happening outside of those panels and keynotes I felt over dinner and in networking sessions was very impressive.
Yeah. I have to agree, like I said, my Super Bowl of conferences, so uh, awesome. And hope, to see you in future ones. I know we didn’t, we didn’t meet in person, but hope to see you in some future ones. But so switching it up a bit here, I do wanna uh, spend some time on Paxon Of course. So, you’ve had some major viral product moments, as I mentioned before, like the KC genes. I mean, , they started organically. So a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of executives that listen to this, program. And I’m just curious on your end how do you identify early signals of demand and how do you make these moments like scale?
Yeah, thanks. That’s a great question. We have really built a culture of listening to our community, and social listening is so important. So whether it’s through comments, product reviews, or seeing the same item pop up across different channels, we’re really looking for those organic signals of traction.
Mm-hmm. And when something starts We’ve got a cross-functional team ready to act from both design to merchandising and fulfillment. So we can adjust our inventory positions, expand assortment, or even build an entire campaign around it. So in the case, in the case of the Casey Jean what started as a personal file post from a creator on TikTok led to over 200,000 units sold because we were able to quickly recognize.
This moment of this baggy jean of a creator in her bedroom and scale it, and it created an entire halo effect for the organization outside of that TikTok shop. Onto our.com and all the way trickling through into our stores, we were, we were seeing customers come in asking for that viral TikTok chain.
Wow. And the same true in our music merchandise. Our metro booming capsule, which launched in Q4 of 2024, started with a single style that sold on social commerce and led to selling that t-shirt a hundred thousand units alone last year. Hmm has really inspired a lot of additional collections and now we’re continuing the momentum with a Post Malone capsule.
But a lot happening as it relates to being able to meet the customer where they are. Really capitalize on that moment, see the virality, and then carry it all the way through. Hmm. What is it like, I mean, bird’s eye view, like, let me be a fly on your wall for a moment. What does it feel like to head an organization when, you know, all of a sudden, whether it’s the kcg, the Post Malone, like all these other things that are going on, what does it feel like when something takes off?
Like what happens at that moment? What are you thinking? it’s always very fluid and you know, we, really like to be consumer led and we believe in the power of. Creation. And so I think there’s an excitement to lean into the moment, but also to keep our eye on the broader landscape. And you know, there’s, we have such a unique curation of product from the Paxon brand itself to all of our amazing brand partners.
The people we collaborate with. So I think, every day is really exciting at Pac Sun because our consumer’s so fluid and our business has so much inherent complexity to it. Mm-hmm. And really we move at the pace of culture. And so it’s exciting. We’re in sports, we’re in arts. Culture and fashion, and we also are big on community and philanthropy.
So I think kind of regardless of those individual moments, mm-hmm. The overall heart of the brand really moves at the pace of the culture of the youth. Hmm. When you think about, or when I look at your, overall model, and when I think about as a creator myself and as somebody that, I mean, creates an enormous amount of content, I mean, I’ll do over 2000 interviews this year, so I’m a creator at heart.
This is what I do. So when I think about a brand like Pacsun and what you’re doing to really champion both fans and to champion the brand at the same time and creators like you kinda almost have like. All three of those are, it’s win-win win in my opinion. What do you think are some of the secrets or even just the things or the components that you’ve been able to, or the organization’s been able to do, whether it’s, I don’t know whether it’s operational, it could be anything actually that allow you to really capture and execute on that type of model.
’cause many have tried, but it’s, you know, easier said than done. Absolutely. it protects on, it really starts with trust and we trust our community to show up authentically and they trust us to reflect what they care about. That being said, we’re very intentional behind the scenes and we’ve built very clear brand guardrails and a strong sense of identity.
And you know, content and product discovery happening organically still ladders back to our core values around youth culture, inclusivity, creativity. I mean, we’re big proponents of the creator economy and we want to bring our. To be a part of the conversation. And you know, our team of course monitors sentiment and engagement closely so we know when to lean in and course correct.
But in general, we really believe that powering the creator economy and giving people freedom to help story tell alongside our brand and be the champion of our products is what makes that connection feel so real or authentic. you mentioned one of my favorite artists a moment ago, so , I have to circle back to that post Malone, and I understand that, you know, music has become, as I mentioned, a core pillar of PAC on how do these music partnerships kind of come along?
Like how do they start? I know right now, obviously you have a name, you got lots of sales, lots of things that you’ve done and a lot of successes. But if you could even take me back, back just a little bit, it doesn’t have to be any specific one, but like , how does one even engage or start to create these partnerships with, with musicians and things like that?
Yeah, so we really have four key pillars that we think about when we think about structuring our business and what Pacsun wants to stand for and go after, and where we create that intersection of community. And the first is music. Second is sport, third is fashion, and the fourth is the arts. And music has been a key pillar for us, and whether it was.
You know, several years back when we brought ASAP Rocky in to be our guest artistic director, and he led a lot of different product collaborations, but he also performed in our New York Soho store, or whether it was Willow Smith performing in our downtown LA store and celebrating the launch of. Our, gender free clothing collection.
it’s really important for us to connect with our community and bring our brand to life through these four pillars inclusive of music. So this year, for example, we’ve g leaned into immersive experiences at Coachella where our roadside stand pop up. Suffered exclusive drops and festival inspired styling moments.
And then we showed up at Neon tapping into kind of the late night energy. And then most recently, just last month, we were at do ball outside of New York and. We launched a limited edition capsule and turned our Soho flagship store into a festival ready styling hub. And then we showed up on the festival rounds.
And so, you know, we’ve got all of that. And then day to day we have artist capsules from Metro Boomin to Post Malone, as I mentioned earlier, and, and our finding ways to connect fans with the music that they love through fashion and through self expressions. The goal, you know, across each of these activations isn’t just to show up, but to really participate in and celebrate music and self-expression alongside our community.
And ultimately to create emotional connections that carry over into product discovery and sales. And ultimately brand love for both Pac Sun and for the brands and creators that we represent. I love it. , It’s such a great story. It’s , so many lessons , and what you’ve said. And , I’m gonna spend some time thinking about some of what you shared today.
Things like creating that emotional connection and of course thinking about different ways to show up. And I feel like obviously you , a cool brand that you’re able to do that with in quite a track record, but I think there’s lessons for. Many different industries and businesses in, some of the words you said today.
So Brie, I really appreciate you taking some time out to come out on the show. That being said, also, if somebody wants to continue to follow the, the journey of Axon or, yourself, I mean, how do people connect? Yeah, absolutely. For PacSun, I highly re recommend following us across all of our social channels.
So from IG to TikTok we definitely post also on X and LinkedIn as well as pacsun.com. And then for myself, I would love for you to follow along on LinkedIn at Brianne Olson. Amazing. And February listing, just so you know, , we’ll definitely put some links in the show notes and on the blog so that you can just click on the links and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, make sure you hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button and breathe. Thanks again so much for coming on the show. Thanks, Adam. Appreciate it.
