From the Youth Report to global collaborations, PacSun’s CEO shares how purpose-driven leadership fuels innovation and connection
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Brieane Olson, CEO of PacSun, live at the PacSun Purpose Partner Summit in Los Angeles. Brie discusses the company’s first Youth Report exploring Gen Z and Gen Alpha insights, the creation of PacSun’s Youth Council, and the brand’s mission to champion purpose-driven partnerships with companies like Formula One and Adidas. Through data, collaboration, and authenticity, PacSun continues to shape culture and empower the next generation.
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 our fleet of over 350 stores and Pacsun.com you will find brands such as Formula 1, The Met, UFC, Brandy Melville, J. Galt, and Fear of God ESSENTIALS, in addition to our best-selling Pacsun brand.
Watch Full Interview:
Full Unedited Transcript
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 on the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on be Our Guest to Apply. Alright, so today I’m in Los Angeles, California. Let me tell you, I just got done watching the closing keynote by Brieane Olson, um, CEO of PacSun, who’s been on the show before, and she was nice enough to invite Mission Matters to come cover their.
Summit, which we’re gonna hear all about. They released an amazing report today. Um, first thing, first, Bria, I just caught you off the main stage, full adrenaline. How are you feeling right now? I’m feeling great. Yeah. Very, very grateful. Yeah. I know this was the first year, uh, for releasing this report and, and the news.
Um, like talk about that. Talk about what this has meant. Yeah. You know, the report is incredibly meaningful to us at PacSun. It’s work that we felt was very important to do because. We don’t believe that there is research and data out there today serving Gen Z and Gen Alpha. In the way that we presented it, it, it, the, the research that’s out there is good.
It surfaces trends. It can tell you where you are in brand rankings. Yeah. But our research really gets at the why, what are the emotive feelings? What are the real changes happening inside Gen z, gen Alpha? How are they contrasted and compared, and why does that matter? It matters for everyone in the room irrespective of industry.
Mm-hmm. Because these are our future consumers or current consumers in the Paxon case, and so it was something very important to us to create this free resource that’s available to everyone in our community, kind of irrespective of your industry to better understand these two emerging generations. Now, today I’ve interviewed multiple of your youth council members, and let me tell you such brilliant, brilliant women and just the work they’re doing and like the collaborations and I can’t wait till you see all the content.
It’s gonna be amazing. Like they’re, they’re amazing. What went into creating that youth council and why, why was it important? I feel in reflection, PacSun has been co-creating with our consumer for the last decade or two. Hmm. But we really wanted to take it one step further and ensure that their voices were being heard, even in our own boardroom.
Mm-hmm. So advising the leadership team myself, the board. Ensuring that we get this kind of echo chamber and this really critical mass of voices, representative of both Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and also offer them mentorship opportunities. So it’s a 12 month opportunity. Oh wow. We’ll be meeting four times a year in person.
Then additional events like what we just did today? Yeah. With our very first Pac Sun Partner Purpose Summit, which was a gathering of, you know, the brands in our community, these amazing partners that we have, ranging from the Los Angeles Rams, LAFC, Pinterest TikTok, so from tech, and then our amazing fashion brands like Adidas.
Studio by supervision. Really just so special to gather everyone here united by one common theme of purpose. Yeah. And how we can lead with purpose, authenticity, transparency, and sharing this data with all of kind of the cohorts of our brand partners. So I asked, I asked this question to some of the previous guests that were booked in here, and that was for the influencers and for the youth council, and even some of the bigger brands like the, the Football club, um, Los Angeles Football Club.
So from their end, I was looking at like, what do they look at, like when they’re, or look at when they’re going to collaborate with a brand, whether it’s clothing like P Sun or otherwise, for yourself as a brand owner and as a CEO, um, that’s, you know, chosen to steward that brand. What, uh, what does that look like for you in terms of who you want to be representing the brand and, and the types of, maybe influencers, but whomever, brand ambassadors, whatever word you wanna use there, who do you look for and how you make those decisions?
Yeah, of course. First we look to social listening, so. We look at what our customers are gravitating towards, whether that be sports brands, fashion brands. Where is the customer already showing up and where can we meet them? Where can we create opportunities for them? And where can we create points of discovery for new brands or opportunities or experiences they might not have had?
But the most important piece is really shared values. Yeah. So at Pac Sun, some of those shared values are authenticity, trust, loyalty. We’re building long-term brand relationships with. You know, brand partners with creators. Many of the people that are on the youth council that have been appointed to the youth council have been working for it with PacSun for 2, 3, 4 years.
Yeah. So, um, you know, we like to build these very meaningful relationships. And that’s really important when we’re looking at partnerships and collaborations, looking at the ability to have a longer view. Hmm. And then looking at the other side of that question, I mean, you also partner with organizations like, like F1 and things that you’re doing in there.
Can you talk about that and like what it takes to, to even have that vision to, to make that type of collaboration happen? First of all, I’m just incredibly proud of the talent pipeline at Paxon. Yeah. Our merchandising and design team led by Rich Cox are just phenomenal and they’re always one step ahead of what’s happening in culture.
So Formula One, we’re actually on our fourth year of partnering with them. Mm-hmm. Even before Drive to Survive came out or was a concept or idea. And so we’ve had this partnership of building Formula One with a lot of intention of understanding that it would become more important to more people in the US market.
Yeah. And we’re really looking forward to expanding our Formula One partnership globally as we expand globally as well. Yeah. That’s amazing. I saw, I was, I was talking about it and I was like, what you guys, formula one here, there, like, I feel like once you get into the PacSun ecosystem you can’t miss it.
Am I wrong? Yeah, exactly. It’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Hari. Yeah. Alright, so just coming off this big event, um, last question. What’s up for the rest of the year? Like, like tell me a little bit more about the vision and how you plan on closing out the year. I think, where are we in Q4? Might be, I don’t know, the 10 flies is flying by, but gimme the rest of the year for you.
Yeah, we’re writing. Q3. We had a fantastic back to school. So just tremendous gratitude to our consumer, all of our brand ambassadors, our field, we have 75 field leaders here with us today, celebrating those tremendous results. We’re gonna jump right into focusing on Q4 holiday, black Friday, and ensuring that, you know, we have all of the right inventory management, you know, kind of product ready for Q4, and then we’re setting our sites and our long range plan for the next three to five years.
Yeah, that’s what’s on the docket for next week. Oh wow. And, and, uh, yeah, we’re gonna jump right into it, but having this Pac Sun Purpose Summit for the first time was so meaningful. The research that Global Data did, and Neil and his team Yeah. Will be so interesting to be able to look at it every year over year and start to compare back to the data and the results that we had from this year.
And so really looking at that long-term view, I’m very excited to be able to continue to track these customer behavior changes for both Gen Alpha and Gen Z. I had Neil in the show earlier too, and Oh my gosh, so good. So good to be able to get into the data and get into like from his perspective or even what it took to put that report together, like, oh my gosh, congrats on wanting to have the vision or having the vision to take on that undertaking.
That wasn’t an easy thing to put together. Well, you know, Neil and his team at Global Data were incredible partners. They helped guide us to ensure that all of the questions were very unbiased, that we were getting at the right things, that we were answering things that were not available in the market through other data.
And so I would say, you know, we, we have the curiosity and then we put the resources behind it. But it’s really, really important for us to offer this as a free resource to everyone in our community. Absolutely amazing. Last thing I want you to do, Brie, um, look into the camera. How can people follow PacSun you the journey?
Like how can they connect? Yeah, it would be great if you could follow PacSun on Instagram and TikTok. Mm-hmm. We’d also really appreciate a follow on LinkedIn and you can follow me at Brian Olson at LinkedIn neba. Fantastic. And everybody watching, just so you know. We’ll definitely put some links in the show notes, so 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, 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, hit that subscribe or follow button. And brie, congrats. So it was an amazing conference. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here to cover it. We appreciate it. Thank you.
