Chief Merchandising Officer Richard Cox shares how Pacsun blends purpose, creativity, and data to stay ahead in youth culture.
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Richard Cox, Chief Merchandising Officer at Pacsun, during the Pacsun Purpose Partner Summit in Los Angeles. Richard discusses Pacsun’s transformation into a purpose-driven brand, unveiling insights from the company’s Youth Report on Gen Z and Gen Alpha. He also reflects on iconic collaborations with ASAP Rocky, The Met Museum, and Formula One — all tied to Pacsun’s mission to create meaningful connections with 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.
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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. Today I’m in Los Angeles, California, and I’m at the PacSun Purpose Partners Summit, and I have.
Richard Cox on the line. Richard, man, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
Alright, so I definitely wanna get into the summit today. I probably, the listeners can hear a little bit of music in the background. Yeah. There’s a full audience, a lot going on. But first tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing at Paxon. Yeah, so I’m the Chief Merchandising officer over at Paxon.
I’ve been with the company for close 17 years, I wanna say. Um, long time lose count, actually. Um, my responsibilities are over, uh, the buying team. Yeah. Our design team, and then I manage a lot of our special projects and global partnerships. Wow. Um, so yeah, busy with all of that, you know, it’s everything that I, I would say that is customer facing or consumer facing, and then really close relationship with our marketing team as well, man.
So tell me what it’s like to, you’ve been there that long, 17 years, going on two decades to see the rise of this company, the growth, like, what’s that like man. It’s amazing. Um, you know, I started with the company straight outta college and Oh, really? We definitely were in a different, uh, place in terms of our brand positioning at that time.
So when you look back on that and see how far we’ve come, especially within the last five years, the, the transformation of the company and to know that you’ve been a part of that is just, it’s incredible. Mm. What, what do you think is some of the, the secret or the secret sauce that makes Pac Sun so unique?
Yeah. I think we really started to define our mission a bit more, and that’s, that’s kind of what this purpose Summit is all about too. Um, is. We wanted to become more of a purpose driven company. Mm-hmm. Uh, we identified that that was important to companies that do the best that thrive out there. They’re not just about driving revenue only.
Yeah. Um, obviously that’s a part of it. We wanna make money as a business, but they, they mean something else to their consumer and to their community, and they, they have a mission that’s above, you know, financials. Mm. So I think that when we took that step back and started to. Approach it from that, that spot.
Uh, we started to see success and yeah, it feels like the transformation was easier. Wow. What, um, you mentioned that you work on the collaborations as well, a lot of famous collabs that have come through the door as a PAC song. Like what’s been some of your favorite moments being, being at the helm? Yeah. I mean, we have a lot.
I mean, if I were to look back on some, yeah. We, we worked with ASAP Rocky years ago. Yeah. Um, he was our guest artistic director brought in some collaborations with us. Always fun when you work with a name that, as big as that for sure. We partnered with Emma Chamberlain a few years ago as well. It was more of a marketing partnership.
Emma was incredible and really helped us kick our year off that year. Um, so really thriving. And then more recently, you know, our global partnership with Formula One racing has, has been, has been great. Our partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art has surprised a lot of people and been a strong one as well.
Yeah, there’s so many, but those, those come to mind immediately, man. That’s amazing. And so today we’re here for the, for the summit, the Purpose Summit. Mm-hmm. What brought this about, and maybe for those at home that couldn’t, you know, attend today, like, talk to me a little bit more about what goes on behind them.
Yeah, I mean, the intention is to one, reveal our, um, youth report. Mm-hmm. So we did some research, um, earlier this year mm-hmm. Um, with Global Data and Neil Saunders, um, had them help us, uh, you know, take a poll of, uh, teens, gen Z and Gen Alpha across the country. Um, and try, try to dive into what are their motivations, what are they into?
Um, what makes them tick. Um, there’s a lot of reports out there, uh, already that try to, you know, address that, but we felt like we could dig deeper with Neil and his team and we got some great insights. So the purpose of today’s Purpose Summit is to, yeah. One, try to reveal that first youth report. Mm-hmm.
Um, that we plan to reveal annually or release annually. Yeah. But then also to have some great, insightful conversations with partners. Um, of our brand mm-hmm. People on our team and really talk about, you know, what this purpose work means. Why it’s important to mean more to your consumer than just be a brand that’s trying to sell something to them.
Yeah. And how do we just inspire that next generation, gen Z, but then Gen Alpha as well. That’s amazing. And one thing is, and I, I always like this, whenever there’s like an initial report and something that’s gonna be done annually, there’s always a learning process on that one. I remember when we did our first leadership conference, I remember all these things as our company as we grew.
And I’m just curious, we did anything surprise you in the re and in that either creating the report and going through that process and or maybe some of the outcomes that maybe the team wasn’t expecting. Was there any kinda like aha moments along the way? There’s always some of the more tactical learnings.
Yeah. Which those are more boring, but I think. You know, there’s a few of those. What we could do better just to, you know. Uh, streamline that process. Sure, sure. Especially since we’re trying to print our very first, you know, report. You know? That’s so cool. Make it a tangible thing that you could walk away with.
Isn’t that amazing though? How do you feel about that thing? You gotta feel like, yeah. It was really cool to see that last night. Like, it’s fully printed, it’s perfect. It’s ready to be handed out, you know, it looks official, so love that. Um, but then at a high level, just some of the learnings from the report were, were incredible.
You know, it shocked us a bit. Mm-hmm. Um, one being the importance of mental health. Uh, interesting to Gen Z and Gen Alpha, that being one of the number one things that they care about or the number one interesting that they care about. Wow. And then also what influences them. You know, you would think you, you take a step back of, oh, of course it’s gonna be their, you know, their friends or macro influencers and celebrities mm-hmm.
That influenced their decision making. But, you know, it opened our eyes a bit when, you know, those were still key, but family. Family really, and, and then what inspires them themselves. So a lot, yeah. A lot of the data came back and said, no, I inspire myself. I need to rely on maybe macro influencers. Mm-hmm.
Maybe celebrities for education on what is available to me. But when it comes to making that decision, my family’s probably most important and influencing me where I want to go or it’s. And just that authenticity and unique uniqueness that they all try to achieve. That’s hopeful to me. Yeah. That’s awesome.
That’s pretty cool. I mean, I’m not trying to, I haven’t read the whole report, but to me that just makes me feel good. Like fa maybe where the pendulum’s going back to family, right? Like that’d be cool. I mean, we gotta dive deeper in that. But, um, I would say that it does, it did give us food for thought in terms of strategy.
Yeah. Yeah. So what’s next? I mean, you’re, you’re, you know, in the design area, you’re in the collaboration area. You’re, you’re the guy working with f with F1. I mean, I’m, I’m going to F1, I’m like, when do I get my F1 jacket design? Man, man, I gotta get my, my F1 jacket design. We gotta get your jacket. Where’s the mission Matters collab.
Come on man. I love it. We gotta get you a jacket. Um. What is, what’s next for you guys? The seriously? Like what, what’s on the agenda? That I am serious about my jacket, but what’s next? Other than that? We’ll, we’ll get you a jacket. We gotta get you a jacket. Um, yeah, I mean, coming down the pipeline over the next few months you’ll see us continue to activate at a high level.
Mm-hmm. So, you know, our Formula One partnership continues. We’re excited. That’s awesome. We’re gonna be, we’ve been Trackside. Mm-hmm. Um, the last couple of years Is Bree going this year, Singapore. Uh, maybe, I don’t dunno about Singapore, but that’s the CEO for everybody that’s watching. But she’s been on the show some other times, but yeah, she might be doing Singapore.
You hopefully curious. Take me, take me to, I’ll be Trackside. It’s gonna be cool. Is Singapore? Yeah. Okay, so, we’ll, I’m, we’re covering that, that whole event and everything else. So that’ll be like, nice. Are you gonna go to Austin? ’cause that’s where we, we will be Trackside Oh. At Austin. And have a paxon popup.
I didn’t get the invite. Maybe. Okay. You gotta get out there. See, um, we’ve got one of the busiest booths there. Wow. Every, wow, that’s awesome. We’ve done it two years in a row. This will be our third year. So excited for that one. That one’s next month. That’s one with Circuit of the Americas and the United States Grand Prix takes place.
Um, so excited for that one. Mm. Um, you’ll see us. You know, try to, you, you may see us pop up internationally as well. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. So that, that’ll be nice more to come there, but it is, you know, part of the plan. So come on man. Stay tuned on that one. That’s awesome. Um, more, more product drops with, of course, some of our partners like the Met, you know, we still have some.
It’s amazing. What does it take to put something like that together? I’m just so curious. Like that’s one of the biggest brands I, and obviously Formula Me one’s huge. That’s big. Oh yeah. I mean, that’s, those are all big, but the Met, you wouldn’t quite expect that necessarily. You wouldn’t have caught some people up there.
So that’s where it’s like, but it’s, it’s awesome. Yeah. My team’s great. Yeah. I I Next level to them. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it’s, and they’re good partners. Um, so it really starts with, you know, going out to New York. Yep. Um. What’s really nice about them is they have their curators there. Mm-hmm. There’s the collection that you see, the permanent collection that you see that’s on the actual floor of the Yeah.
But then they let us, you know, get a peek behind the curtain on things that are, then there’s the other 90%. So yeah, they do a great job of allowing us that. So we act, obviously, have creative meetings, get access to some of that, get inspired by that. And then from there, you know, my team does just, you know, I give them all the kudos in terms of, you know, taking that inspiration and creating these cool stories and bringing that to life.
That’s awesome. Well, well, Richard, I know they’re calling you and you gotta get out to the conference or the summit, so, um, appreciate you coming on the show. Last thing I want you to do is, uh, look into the camera. How do people learn more about your work, follow the brand? Like how do people do that? Yeah, I mean, just follow Pson, obviously follow the PS on Instagram or our TikTok for sure.
Um, there’s lots of cool updates that happen there. You want to know everything that we’re up to. You can go through there or follow Paxon on LinkedIn and if you want to, you know, find more out about me, myself. Follow me, Richard Cox on LinkedIn. Uh, but yeah, that’s how you can find us. Awesome. If everybody watching at home, just so you know, we’ll definitely put some links in the show notes 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, 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 Richard, man, appreciate you coming on. Thank you. Thanks for having you so much me. Appreciate you.
