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SPEAKER_04: Hey, it's Guy here. You know, we talk a lot on this show about hustle, and recently I spoke to actor Andy Garcia who shared some amazing stories about starting out in Hollywood where he worked on a loading dock with another newcomer, Bryan Cranston. Andy was also a catering waiter at the Beverly Hilton serving dinner to stars like Jane Fonda. But just a few years later, he was literally making dinner and talking about the Corleone family with Francis Ford Coppola. Check out my conversation with Andy Garcia on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for The Great Creators with Guy Raz wherever you listen to podcasts. And now, onto today's show.
SPEAKER_01: So I first set up a tripod in my apartment and I took photos of myself wearing all the clothes, and I printed out a little pamphlet. And so my theory was to go into Fred Siegel and basically be wearing the clothes. And I just walked in and I was like, hey, is the buyer here? And the girl at the counter, I remember, just kind of laughed at me. You know, I mean, the thing is it was such a high profile store that I think she thought I was nuts. Nobody walks in off the street to Fred Siegel and gets a meeting.
SPEAKER_04: Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Paige Mycoskie couldn't find the clothes she liked, bought a sewing machine to make her own, and turned her colorful outfits into the brand Aviator Nation.
For better or worse, fashion trends start in very particular places. In the US, those places happen to be New York and Los Angeles. I live just north of San Francisco, and it doesn't take long for LA trends to make their way up the 101 to Northern California.
Anyway, about two years ago, I started to notice a lot of people, initially yoga moms and their daughters, wearing a very particular type of zip-up hoodie.
You couldn't miss it. I wore five stripes, yellow, orange, red, blue, and navy, like a sunset over water. And I figured that hoodie must come from LA. And I was right. It was a brand that seemed to explode to come out of nowhere overnight. I even started to notice it on TikTok, at the gym, in the grocery store. It was everywhere. So I figured, well, it must be one of those one-hit-wonder brands that'll fizzle out pretty soon.
But there, I was wrong. The brand, Aviator Nation, was actually started in 2006. Its rise was a slow burn, to say the least. Its founder, Paige Mikoski, started out by making clothing for herself. She'd rifle through the racks at thrift shops around Venice Beach, find vintage sweatshirts, and paste designs onto them, things like rainbows and lightning bolts. They had a late-70s California beach vibe. And as often happens on this show, people started asking Paige to make one for them.
Initially, she sold her sweatshirts to small boutiques in LA. But eventually, they did so well, Paige was able to open up a small store of her own.
She didn't have money for advertising, but she happened to be in Los Angeles, which, as I mentioned earlier, is where fashion trends tend to begin.
Aviator Nation eventually branched out beyond sweatpants and shirts to jackets, hats, bags, and denim. And it grew slowly but steadily. Not crazy out-of-proportion sales, but growth each year.
But unlike many other successful founders, Paige never took on any investment. She is the main owner of Aviator Nation.
During the pandemic, when more casual clothes became a lot more popular and practical, Aviator Nation began to go viral on TikTok, and sales exploded from 27 million to more than 130 million today.
Paige Mycoskie grew up in the 1980s in Texas. Her dad was a doctor for the Texas Rangers, and her mom became a best-selling cookbook author later in life. As for Paige, she loved art and sports, and studied photography in college. In the early 2000s, kind of on a lark, she and her brother Blake applied to compete on a new reality show called Survivor.
SPEAKER_01: Back then, I don't know how it is now, but you send in like a three-minute video and that's how you apply. So anyway, he sent in his video, I sent in mine, and our big thing was like, okay, let's make this a competition. Let's see who can get on. And it was so funny, a couple weeks later, he called me and he's like, did you get a
call? And I'm like, yeah. I'm like, did you get a call? And so we both got a call from CBS to basically come to an interview. And we obviously were like, this is so weird. I wonder if they know that we both tried out, if they know they're asking us both to come in.
SPEAKER_04: They didn't know that you were brother and sister at that point.
SPEAKER_01: No, they didn't. And so anyway, we went to our interviews and then we got a second call.
We were both being called back. And then finally, I think part three was for all the final people to come to LA.
And apparently they were going to put us in front of Les Moonves, the president of CBS. And then he was going to choose the ultimate contestant. So he sits us down and he's like, okay, Blake and Paige.
It was not until literally this week that we knew we had two Mycoskies here. I love you both. And I would love to have either of you on Survivor. He was like, but I can't put both of you on Survivor. So you can have the choice. You can either decide amongst yourself who's going to do Survivor or he's like, I have this new show, Amazing Race, and I can actually put you both on the show as a team and then you can compete together. And we were like, what's Amazing Race? Because the first season hadn't even started yet. Apparently they had just filmed the first season. And so this would be for the second season. And he explained that to us and he said, well, it's a race around the world, same prize, a million dollars to the winner, but you don't have to go survive on a deserted island. Instead, you're going to race around the world as a team.
SPEAKER_01: And we were like, oh, this sounds amazing. Yes, we want to do Amazing Race. I mean, we knew right away that we didn't want one of us to not be able to do it. So we were like, let's go, let's be a team.
SPEAKER_01: And so anyway, we agreed right there that we would be his first team casted for the second season of Amazing Race.
SPEAKER_04:
Those are details that I did not get from my interview with your brother, who I'm now going to reveal is the founder of Tom's Shoes. And we're going to talk about that in a few minutes. But Blake was on our show and we told the story of how he created Tom's and of course
that was part of it. So you're the other half of the story. This is your perspective now of how you got onto the Amazing Race. So you got onto that show and was it a round the world trip or you had to go from – where
did you have to go from and to?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So it was a race around the world. We started actually in Las Vegas and they dropped us off in helicopters in the middle of the desert.
And basically we had to find our way to an airport. And then the first stop was Brazil and we went to Hong Kong, we went to Australia, New
Zealand, multiple places in Africa.
And Blake and I both had never traveled. I think he had been to Europe, but I had never traveled at all. So it was pretty wild.
SPEAKER_04: And the premise was like they gave you a small budget and then you have to survive off that budget and make your way around the world.
And that meant that sometimes you'd sleep like outside oftentimes or like in the jungle or – I mean it was sort of like survivor meets around the world in 80 days.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely. It was interesting because the show was pretty much just starting and so they had a very low budget. And it was kind of like a scavenger hunt, but at the same time we had no money and we're
racing around the world. And so Blake and I always thought that our money should go into buying a guidebook because
we had no cell phones, no computers, nothing like that. And then we just sacrificed. We were like, OK, like we would buy like a loaf of bread literally and eat it for three
days. That would be our food.
SPEAKER_01: And then we would sleep on the street and that was our strategy.
SPEAKER_04: Because if you run out of money, you can't get to the next stop. Basically you're done.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_04: You're done.
SPEAKER_04:
What was the hardest thing you did during the Amazing Race?
SPEAKER_01: I remember when we were in Australia, we went to this place called Coober Pedy. I just remember like just getting sunburned like bad and being in this extreme heat and
having to like trek through the desert and it was just so brutal. I remember physically just feeling completely exhausted.
I lost like 30 pounds on that show. I had like no body fat. Yeah, because we weren't eating.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah. What was the journey in total?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it was six weeks.
SPEAKER_04: Wow. And at the end of the rainbow was literally a pot of gold and it was a million dollars to the winner. And you had to get back to Las Vegas within six weeks?
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we ended up, the finish line was actually in San Francisco.
SPEAKER_04: And what happened as you approached San Francisco?
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, so when we got to San Francisco, we were down to the last three teams.
And when we got there, we had to find something and I was looking at the map and Blake took the map out of my hands and was like, no, we're going this way. I know it's this way. And like kind of made this like executive decision to go basically in the wrong direction.
And it's like a funny thing now we joke about because we ended up losing the race by four minutes in the end. And I always joke with him that he owes me a million dollars and he agrees. Oh, four minutes.
SPEAKER_04: Yep.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it must have been crushing, but obviously looking back on it for starters, it was a
great launching pad for Blake and eventually for you just, I mean, this literally that trip helped inspire Blake to start Tom's right.
Like I guess it went back to Argentina after.
And that really was the beginning of his exposure to this idea that maybe he could start business making shoes and giving a pair away.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. I mean, I think for both of us, we just learned so much about breaking through the barriers
because there really were. When you travel, I mean, everyone knows it's stressful to travel, but on those conditions, we really kind of hit a lot of struggles along the way. And I think that both of us were just so close to that million dollars and then losing it that like, I think we both just wanted to do big things. I think we were both just kind of like, let's just go out and make it anyway.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_04: So that experience ended. And I think for a time you actually worked at CBS on Survivor as like a casting person, but really that was not going to be sort of your long-term career.
SPEAKER_01: No, not at all. After the race, we decided to just kind of move to LA. I really wanted to be in LA anyway.
I kind of had fallen in love with surfing and the CBS people offered me the job at Survivor
to do casting, but I realized pretty soon that it wasn't really for me. I didn't love the travel. And so I started kind of working at a surf shop on the side and that was a little all
SPEAKER_01: over the place at that time.
SPEAKER_04: You start working at a surf shop called ZJ Boarding House. I think it's still there in Santa Monica, like full-time.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. I started as data entry and I was basically putting in orders for the buyers.
It was funny. I would be going through catalogs, putting in his order, and then I would look at my buyer and be like, you know, are you sure you want to order this one? Because I think these shoes are actually like way cooler and I think this hoodie is like
way cooler. I always just kind of had a knack for what people would want. So he would say, okay, let's try that. Let's try that. And then we would order it and then it would sell out. And so he saw that I was really good at choosing what should go in the store. And so he ended up making me his buyer's assistant.
And so then I started going to trade shows and it was so fun. I got to pretty much choose what we were going to carry. And I shifted pretty much what he was ordering, kind of more of the safe items.
And I always wanted the more risky items. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: What were you into? What were the kinds of looks that you were attracted to?
SPEAKER_01: I always wanted the really crazy stuff, you know, the funky colors, the stuff that a lot of people in retail would say that nobody really wants to buy.
And I always believed that like if you had a little bit of the crazy and you still had the blacks and the whites and the neutrals, like that stuff actually looks cooler when it's paired with a little bit of the crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_04:
I guess at a certain point you decided to just for fun start learning how to make clothes.
Like you bought a sewing machine and I guess some instructional DVDs.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So I just, you know, I had all these ideas in my head. I was really, really specific about what I personally wore. I really liked things that felt super broken in.
I wanted really soft clothing all the time. And I naturally ended up shopping in thrift stores and at Goodwill and flea markets.
And I was starting to get more and more specific about like I would see something that I liked,
but it wouldn't fit the way I wanted it to fit. Or I would have something I liked the way it fit, but it wasn't the color I wanted.
And you know, growing up, my grandmother made her own clothes and I spent a lot of time with her and it kind of just hit me. You know, I think I'm going to buy a sewing machine and just make what I'm looking for.
SPEAKER_04:
Right.
SPEAKER_01: And I got some money for my birthday.
It was in 2006 and I remember I ordered a couple books on sewing and DVDs and I taught myself to sew. I taught myself to make patterns. I just could not wait to get home from work and play around on my sewing machine. I remember honestly, like no joke, staying up all night long making clothes. I was completely obsessed. And then I started wearing, you know, the clothes to work.
And that's kind of where it started is everybody was just like, what is that? That is, that's so dope. That's a rad shirt. What is that?
SPEAKER_04: Tell me what they look like. Cause I guess you were using a technique called applique and I'm, forgive me, I'm, I've never made my own clothes. Actually, maybe I think I did make a tie dye shirt in camp once when I was a kid.
SPEAKER_04: So I did, I have made my own clothes. Yeah, sorry. What is applique? I don't know what that is. Can you explain that to me?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So my technique was I basically had an idea of what the graphic was that I wanted on the shirt and I didn't know how to screen print or anything like that.
So for me, I just drew the graphic on a different color, cut it out of fabric and then sewed that fabric on top of the other garment.
SPEAKER_04: So like a heart, you know, if I wanted a heart on the shirt, I would cut out a heart and
SPEAKER_01: then I would sew it on. So that's technically applique. So a lot of it was stripes and shapes, hearts, sunsets, you know, and I would make it all. I would draw it on other colors of t-shirts, cut it out and then sew it on to the sweatshirt.
SPEAKER_01:
And yeah, it was very handmade looking, but it also had this like super unique look cause
I mean, nobody was really doing that. I just did it because it was the only thing that made sense in my head.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah. Before the Lisa Frank revival that happened a couple of years ago, like those things, lightning bolts and hearts, that's like, it was not yet, hadn't been cool in 2005, 2006 when you were doing it. So probably people were like, wow, that's different. Oh yeah, it was.
SPEAKER_01: It's so weird. It's like, I look at the stuff I was literally painting, you know, as an eight year old girl
and I'm kind of doing the same thing now.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah. This is 2006 and this is around the time your brother Blake is starting Tom's, which would
become a huge business. Of course. Did you ever talk about maybe just joining him and because that was a fashion brand that
he was starting.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a really funny story. So when I bought my sewing machine, which was in February, 2006, he was in Argentina and he was supposed to kind of decide what he was going to do next.
And he came back from Argentina and we were very, very close. He goes, Paige, I have an idea and I want to tell you about it.
He came in and he was like, told me the whole thing. He said he was in Argentina and he was inspired by all the people that didn't have shoes there.
And so he wanted to make a traditional Argentina shoe and like an esper drill.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And so his idea was obviously to give back to the people of Argentina by giving away a pair of shoes when he sold a pair.
And it was so random. I mean, he had done nothing in retail and he was like, what do you think?
You know? And I said, Oh my God, that's so crazy. I was like, I literally bought a sewing machine a couple of weeks ago and I've been making clothes. We literally are both thinking about getting into like the fashion industry and we both had no previous discussion about being in fashion at all.
And it was just so, it was kind of a funny moment that we shared, but I, but we definitely
had our own thing going. All right.
SPEAKER_04: So he's starting his business. You're making sweatshirts and t-shirts mainly, right? Yeah, and sweatpants.
SPEAKER_01: And sweatpants.
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
And at what point did you think, well, maybe I should sell these? Like how did it go from you just kind of making stuff on your sewing machine to selling it
to people?
SPEAKER_01: One day I was in Venice and I was walking around and I literally got stopped by like three or four different people in span of a couple hours asking me where they could
buy my sweatpants. Where did you get those?
SPEAKER_04: Wow. And these were sweatpants with just like colorful stripes along the sides.
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
And I just told him, of course I made it myself. Sorry. Like I just made it myself, you know, but that happened like in one day, like three
times and I was just like, this is actually crazy. Like these people want to buy this. And I thought, I wonder if I could actually make clothes and sell them and make more money than I'm making right now at my job.
And then I think it was like a few days later, I went to a trade show with my boss for ZJ
Sportinghouse and I was at the action sports trade show in San Diego and I was wearing something that I made to the trade show and it was like a feeding frenzy because all these
people are there to buy, you know, whatever's the cool thing for their store.
And it was like, I couldn't walk 20 feet without someone being like, what are you wearing? What is that shirt?
And I couldn't go anywhere. I mean, people like were just out of control, thought it was nuts. And so I knew when I got home, I was like, I'm going to try to do this. I'm going to try to actually make a collection and sell it.
SPEAKER_04: When we come back in just a moment, Paige makes some more clothes and takes them unannounced to one of the most exclusive boutiques in L.A. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. Whether you're a small business owner growing your team or an H.R.
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SPEAKER_02: Hi, guys, I'm Javier and I'm listening to you from Santiago, from Chile.
I listen to the podcasts every day, actually, on my daily commute. My favorite episode is the one about Rent the Runway from 2017 because of two reasons.
First, I use it as a short business case in a class that I teach about business models and entrepreneurship in a new university here in Santiago because it teaches the importance of running tests and MVPs and all that fun stuff. But the most important one is the fact that anyone with a good idea and with a
relentless focus on execution can build a business that impacts society. And I think that's the reason of why I love your show so much. Thank you very much. If you want to share your favorite episode of How I Built This, record a short voice
SPEAKER_04: memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is and why. A lot like the voice memo you just heard. And email it to us at hibt at id.wunderi.com. And we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks and future episodes. And thanks so much. We love you guys. You're the best. And now back to the show.
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2006 and it seems like whenever Paige goes out wearing her handmade clothes, people ask her, where can I buy that? So she decides to start selling them.
SPEAKER_01: And so I decided I'm going to quit my job.
I'm going to move home to Arlington. I'm going to tell my parents that I am going to spend some time sewing, only
focused on these clothes that I was making.
And I was going to try to start selling the clothes. And I just felt like I needed to get into the craft, like I needed to just be sewing. I needed to see what I could really do. You know, so I went back to Texas for May and June of 2006, and I pretty much did not leave the bedroom.
I set up a workshop and I just sewed all day, all night, and I had like a rack outside my door and I was just making clothes.
SPEAKER_04: With the idea that you would then do what?
You would bring it to a retailer and see if they would buy them and put them on the racks or you would sell them at a flea market or at a trade show. What was your idea?
SPEAKER_01: I basically did not really know at that time.
I knew that I was going to try to sell it to somebody back in California. I knew that California was the place where people were starting brands.
So my plan was basically to try to get a collection sewn up because I knew that
from being the buyer's assistant, that people sell a collection. They don't just sell two things. So I needed to make an actual collection and then I would decide where I would try
to sell it. But there was one store in particular that was what I thought was the best store in LA. It was Fred Siegel in Santa Monica.
SPEAKER_01: And that was always where I thought all the new up and coming brands were being displayed. And so my goal was to make a collection in Texas and then go back to LA and try to
get Fred Siegel to carry the brand.
SPEAKER_04: Tell me what the designs looked like.
Was it t-shirts with sewn hearts on them or lightning bolts or was it stripes?
Tell me what it looked like.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was a lot of stripes. I would make a little half sun so it'd be like a sunset on a bunch of stripes. And then the lightning bolt was another thing that was really consistent. I just love lightning bolts and all the stuff that I liked was from the 70s. I mean, a lot of the kind of vintage stuff that I wore and would buy would have
kind of those 70s rainbows and stuff on them.
I also had posters in my rooms and stuff of like cars that were from the 70s.
I think that I get inspiration from the colors of cars and a lot of record
albums and old skateboards.
SPEAKER_04:
And tell me about the sweatpants or the t-shirts or the sweatshirts. I mean, you were buying those already off the rack or you were making those from
scratch. You were actually designing the cut.
SPEAKER_01: I was making them from scratch. So I would buy garments at Goodwill and thrift stores and just cut it up into a
big piece of fabric.
And then I would make my own garment from patterns that I would make. And the way that I would make the patterns is for me, and again,
SPEAKER_01: this is like totally no like fashion school and a lot of people probably think I'm crazy, but I would take my favorite garment,
like let's say my favorite t-shirt. I would carefully take all of the stitching out of it and then I could lay it
flat. And then I had a puzzle,
like I had a piece of each part of the garment and then I would trace that onto paper and I would have a pattern.
SPEAKER_04: Over that two, two and a half month period living in Texas at your parents' home, how many items of clothing do you think you made?
SPEAKER_01: I would say I probably made around a hundred garments.
SPEAKER_04: And what did your parents think about this?
I mean, you were, were they supportive or were they like, hey, so what's the plan? Like, are you going to get a job? Like, what do they think?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's funny. I mean, my mom is always like, just loves everything.
My dad, on the other hand, is very, very supportive and encouraging, but he's also very analytical and I'll never forget. We're sitting in the kitchen and I was like, okay, here's the thing. Like I made some clothes, I was wearing them around. People liked them. I think I'm going to try to start a clothing brand.
Well, what do you think? Do you believe in this? And he was like, I'll give you like, I think he said six months to be profitable. He was like, if you're profitable in six months, then I'll believe in you. Something like that. It was like pretty hardcore, but like at the same time, it made sense. You know, it was like a reasonable amount of time. So I said,
okay, I got to do this fast. It's got to be profitable and I'm going to stay focused. You know?
SPEAKER_04: So after a few months in Texas, presumably you go back to LA.
And by the way, did you have a name for, for your label,
for your brand at that point?
SPEAKER_01: I thought of the name when I was back in California, like right after I got back. So I was basically sitting there in my bedroom and I had all the clothes around me and I think I probably lit a couple candles. I always do that.
I'm like big into like setting the vibe.
SPEAKER_04: You are definitely living the California. You're like, yeah,
SPEAKER_04: you're like proving the, the stereotypes of like hippie dippy people in Southern California. You like the candles. Okay. I'm in your room. You're lighting candles.
SPEAKER_01: And even, even today, like I don't start my work until I have candles lit and music playing and like the right lighting.
SPEAKER_04:
I bet your cortisol levels are low. Yeah. Okay. That's good.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So I kind of set my vibe and of course as a photographer,
I'm thinking to myself, like I'm going to have to like shoot photos of this stuff. And what's it going to look like as a brand and literally on a shelf in my
bedroom. I have probably 30 pairs of aviator sunglasses, all different.
Like I get them at flea markets and stuff and I always collected them and I always wore aviator. I think, I think my first like obsession with aviators came from Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis and Top Gun cause that was my favorite movie. And I had the poster on my wall growing up and,
and then I remember thinking like, what do I want to do with this brand? Like,
you know, this could be cool if it was like also bringing cool people together and the word nation kind of came from that because I'm like, I want it to be like a group of people that are all wearing these cool sunglasses, this lifestyle hanging out at the beach,
like surfing together friends. So anyway, I'm like aviator nation.
SPEAKER_01: The very same night I was messing around with what I should do with the
logo and I put the A and the N together and I realized that that was really
cool. And then the lines that are in the A were meant to represent the sunset.
SPEAKER_04: All right. So you have a name and a logo and about a hundred garments. And so your goal is to get into Fred Siegel. And so how did you,
how did you go about approaching them? Did you start to call them? Was there like a, a number for a buyer that you found? What did you do?
SPEAKER_01: So it's like the calling people thing just doesn't work. And I kind of knew that from working at the surf shop because when people would call, I mean it's just like leave a message. Like the buyer never really got back to most of the people calling,
but I've seen people walk in off the street from working in the surf shop and, and being like, Hey, can I get a meeting? And sometimes you can. So I first set up a tripod in my apartment and I took photos of myself wearing all the clothes and I printed out paper, like a little pamphlet of myself wearing all the clothes. And so my theory was to go into Fred Siegel and basically be wearing the clothes and I just walked in and I was like, Hey, is the buyer here? And the girl at the counter, I remember just kind of laughed at me, you know, I mean the thing is it was such a high profile store that I think she thought I was nuts, you know, like nobody walks in off the street to Fred Siegel and gets a meeting and she's
SPEAKER_01: like, no, you know, the buyer's not here. And, and I said, okay, well,
SPEAKER_01: can I just leave this behind for her? And it was the photos that I took of the clothes. And so she's like, okay, sure, I'll give it to her.
And so I left the stuff behind and I got in my car and before I even left the parking lot, my phone rang and it was like the girl from inside.
And she's like, Paige, the buyer actually was just walking in when you were walking out. She happened to see you and what you're wearing. And I showed her the pictures and she loves it. And how soon can you meet?
She wants to meet you. Wow. Yeah. I was just like, what?
And I'm like tomorrow. And she was like, okay. And so I went back the next day. I had my rolling rack and I put all my clothes on there and I rolled them into Fred Siegel. And of course I'm wearing the clothes.
And the buyer looked at the rack and she wanted all of it. She wanted everything. Wow. And so she wrote an order,
SPEAKER_01:
a big order, and I think it added up to about $8,000 and I had my first order and she
was like, so when do you deliver it?
And it was funny because of course I have no real hardcore experience. Like I didn't know. I mean, I knew I had to make all this stuff myself. So I'm like quickly in my head, adding up how many garments it is. Like I said, I can deliver in three months.
SPEAKER_04: I'm curious though, what do you think explains, I mean, what you were bringing in? It was still fairly straightforward. I mean, what is sweatshirts and t-shirts and sweatpants with mainly with
stripes or with the sewn on lightning bolts or heart? I mean,
I guess at that time this is like 2005, 2006 people are wearing like,
like juicy couture and Von Dutch hats.
And I'm trying to think what they were wearing in Southern California.
What was different? Why do you think this appealed to the buyer so quickly at Fred Siegel?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it was, you know, the same thing that appealed to the random people that were like stopping me on the street. I think that it really stood out, you know, it was very bright colors in a certain combination that
for whatever reason people gravitated to, and it had a handmade look to it. It was just very, very bold.
The beginning garments were literally like just tons of stripes
SPEAKER_01: and tons of color. And I think it was just like, wow, what is that?
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that maybe she thought, Oh, it will draw people into the store because it's so colorful or something like that. How did you know what to charge for each garment?
SPEAKER_01: Right. So that was, that was interesting. And I actually credit my brother to this. I called my brother when I was working on the collection and I said, I need to figure out prices on this stuff. And he said, well,
what does it cost to make it? And I said, well,
it's kind of hard to figure out because I'm like making it myself. And so he said, okay, well, you need to figure out what you value your time at and how much time it takes to make the garment and your cost of materials. He's like,
and then you have to add like a little bit of margin because you know, like if this is going to be your life page, you need to be able to like survive.
So I actually timed myself making certain elements of the garment.
And then I remember telling my brother, I'm like, look, it adds up to a lot.
Like I've got to sell, you know, this t-shirt for like $65 and I've got to sell this hoodie
for like a hundred dollars or whatever. And he was like, it's better to price yourself high than too low because there's always going to be like unexpected cost and stuff like that. He's like, just go in there with the prices and see what happens. And she didn't even bat an eye at the prices.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah. So if they ordered $8,000 or more give or take worth of clothing,
you probably had to make at least 50 or a hundred more garments.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And actually after I left Fred Siegel, I ended up on the way home stopping at the store Planet Blue.
This was another kind of really hot store in Venice. And I remember thinking, you know, I'm just going to try for one more. And so I went in there and I was like, Hey guys, I said, is the buyer around? And it ended up being the buyer. This guy that I asked happened to be there. And I said, look, I live literally across the street. I just made these clothes. I just sold to Fred Siegel like 10 minutes ago. Nobody else is going to have this, but I think your store is really good. I would love for you to also have it.
And so when I brought it in, he loved it and he was actually a men's buyer. And she and the Fred Siegel girl was a woman's buyer. And I told him it was unisex. It doesn't matter. It sweats, it's t-shirts. And so he bought all of it for men's like in bigger sizes. Wow. So then at that moment I actually called my brother and I was like, I now have an order from Fred Siegel and Planet Blue, the two best stores in LA. And he was like, okay, well don't sell anymore because you can't not deliver on time or you're going to be screwed. And he was like, you have to make all this stuff. And I'm like, okay. So I kind of added up like what it was going to cost. And I went to Wells Fargo and they gave me a loan for $8,000 and boom,
that was it. That was the money that I used to make the stuff.
SPEAKER_04: With that order, you presumably had three or four months to do,
you didn't hire anybody. You decided to do this all by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I did it all by myself. I did actually have my mom helping me. Like she would cut stripes for me and she would also help me make like the
labels and the tags and stuff. So you went back to Texas to do this? No,
SPEAKER_01: she came out to California and stayed with me. Wow.
SPEAKER_04: You basically had a mini garment factory in your apartment in LA. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01: It was the funniest thing ever. I mean, I would be boiling the dye on the stove like while my mom's like making dinner on the stove. And then I had like a hose out of my bathroom window cause I was like,
I had the whole screen printing thing set up. Like, I mean, it was like a little factory, my whole apartment.
SPEAKER_04: I mean you were buying white fabric basically. Yeah. At that point,
SPEAKER_01: I was buying white fabric and dyeing it.
SPEAKER_01: And I, what's funny is, so I made all the garments for the order and I had COD on the order. So they paid you the moment you walked in.
SPEAKER_04: They paid me the moment I walked in.
SPEAKER_04: So I essentially dropped off the order at Fred Siegel, got my check,
SPEAKER_01: dropped off an order at Planet Blue, got my check. I went to Wells Fargo,
I paid off my loan and I called my dad and told him I was profitable,
which was pretty dope. And now let's wait and see if it sells. And so, so I dropped it, I think on like a Friday or something. And I got a call on Monday and the girl was like, Paige, we sold out. We need a reorder. Like everything is gone. And I like,
it was the coolest feeling ever. But at the same time, I had so much fear of like, how can I get a reorder going so fast that took me so long to make all that.
And so, but it was, it was amazing because it was basically the moment of truth for me that this
wasn't just a small thing. Like they literally sold over a hundred garments in a weekend and that's a lot of money to make in a weekend. Yeah. And, and she was like,
how soon can you get it to me? And I said, I'll do the best I can.
I'll start sewing right now and I'll get you shipments. As soon as I'm done with like a stack of clothes, I'll bring them over.
And I was just bringing over clothes like every week of however many I could make. And there was a waiting list. People like literally had a waiting list. Yeah. And you were, this was literally,
SPEAKER_04:
you were buying all the raw materials off the shelf. Yes.
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, a few months in I was like, I need to start trying to figure out how to do this in bulk.
And that was when I kind of started to go downtown and find materials and bigger quantities and stuff like that. Downtown LA to the garment. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01: So I would go downtown LA and I started just going into factories. I went door to door and if I saw a factory I thought was clean and looked good, then I would go in and try to meet with someone and show them one of my garments and be like, Hey, can you make this?
And literally nobody wanted to touch it. Why? They thought it was too complicated and they were all making like basic t-shirts. Yeah. I mean,
SPEAKER_04: this is the height of American apparel was making things in downtown LA. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01: exactly. And that was what people were making is just real simple basic t-shirts like they had no, I mean,
even the single needle machines to sew the fabric on top of the fabric was not even something that they had. So it was a little bit scary because I was clearly making something that was way
more complicated than all these other people were making.
And I really needed to figure out how to do it.
And so finally I found a factory that was like an embroidery house that did applique work with embroidery and basically it was a detail shop. It was a very small factory and they did a lot of detail work. But my question is you were handmaking everything yourself.
SPEAKER_04:
So everything was slightly different and,
and it was to your standards.
Now you're putting it in the hands of a factory.
How are you going to ensure that the quality and the standards or what you expected?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it was really interesting because I talked them into letting me train their people to do what I was doing,
which was really kind of unique ways of doing things with some of these early garments, like the way that I would sew the stripes together with a zigzag stitch. And so I literally sat down with their sewers and taught them to do it exactly how I was doing it to make it look imperfect. Cause that was part of the beauty of it. You know, it didn't need to be perfect, you know, and they were trained to do things perfect. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, every Stripe can be a little bit different. That's what we want.
SPEAKER_04: All right. So now that you had a factory that agreed to make the garments, I mean, you had to now focus on getting other customers or clients to do the same.
So how did you do that? I mean, did you go to other shops?
Did you go to trade shows or anything like that?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So I actually did end up selling to ZJ boarding house also. I went back to them and then the Abbott Kinney street festival was coming up and
SPEAKER_01:
I decided that I was going to do that and it would be fun to sell basically right down the street in my neighborhood and have a little street fair and make some extra money.
SPEAKER_04: And this is like Abbott Kinney, sort of like a hip kind of street in Venice with a lot of cool boutiques. Although now there's a lot of bigger chains, but traditionally a lot of smaller boutiques on that, on that street.
SPEAKER_01: Yes. At that time it was like a hippie hotspot. Like it was flower shops and coffee shops and like little vintage stores and
whatever. And they had the street festival. So I spent $500.
I bought a booth at the street festival and I sewed up as much as I could and I ended up making, I think 85, $8,600 in one day selling clothes at that street festival.
SPEAKER_04: I imagine, or I think pretty soon after that, you really started to branch out. Like you started to go to trade shows and things like that, right?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. To get into one of these fancy trade shows,
it cost $5,000 for a booth. So since I had just made the money on the street fair, I was like,
I'm going to put all this money into doing the trade show. And I asked my friend Reed Thompson, who is just a buddy of mine,
not an employee. And I said, Hey, will you go out to this trade show in Las Vegas and, and, um,
help me set up a booth and see if I get any orders.
SPEAKER_01: And we'd go to this trade show and we set it all up and we literally,
every other booth, it was just really simple, like basic stuff that people were selling.
Cause I remember walking around just being like, wow, like everything just seems so boring. And then,
and then my booth looks like a California explosion of color.
It was just, it stood out so much. No one could walk by the booth without stopping. So it became this like flood of people and we were writing orders faster than
like, we like knew what to do. And like,
and that night we got to the hotel room and we had this huge stack of orders.
SPEAKER_01: We had sold $150,000 worth of clothes. Wow.
And, um, that was when it just really became a legit brand.
SPEAKER_04: When we come back in just a moment, Paige starts to build a team and learn some tough lessons about hiring, firing, and getting scammed. Stay with us.
I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.
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SPEAKER_07: For some, the shadow falls across decades, even centuries.
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Reputations are re-examined by new generations who may not like what they find.
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A brand new show exploring the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. To find out what their past tells us about our present.
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SPEAKER_07: Follow Legacy now, wherever you get your podcasts. Even if you read all the books, there's very little that can prepare you for parenthood,
SPEAKER_06: but sometimes you can find something that gives you a little insight. From Wondery, I Love My Kid. But shares hilarious stories and anecdotes about parenting that are actually relatable. Like when a friend asks you to do something at 6pm on a weeknight. Here's a clip from an episode. Is dinner three hours at your house? I noticed that when I have company over and we have a dinner party at our house.
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SPEAKER_04: Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2008 and business is ramping up for Aviator Nation. Paige has a bunch of new orders to fill and she's starting to think about opening a store. So she hires her friend Reed and goes out to get a bank loan.
SPEAKER_01: And I think they gave me a credit line,
I want to say it was like $30,000 or something like that. So then I start thinking, okay, terms and stuff like that, because it was a whole project of figuring out
how to get the garments made on this tiny little budget.
Meanwhile, I'll pay for my living and Reed
and whatever else. So Reed and I were working in my apartment,
but working out of your apartment, you start to think, okay, I couldn't really do it out of my bedroom after a while. So I was looking around for office space.
And I remember talking to my brother about it too and just being like, office space is so expensive. And he was like, well, you should try to sell the clothes
SPEAKER_01: and have an office in the same building. Like it was definitely his idea for me
to have a retail store.
So I started looking around on Abbott Kinney because that was like my favorite street and the building that I found that we still have today. So that was the first store. I really did not have big dreams of having a bunch of retail stores. It was kind of like I needed to sell the clothes out of the front to pay for the office in the back.
SPEAKER_04: And the store in your mind was gonna be a one-off. It was gonna be that was gonna be your store where you would sell the clothes and maybe a few other retailers would also sell them.
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
But again, as far as financing the store,
it's actually crazy because I mean,
I pretty much built the store myself.
I mean, I had my parents help me a little bit. Like as far as my dad helped me hang things on the walls,
my mom was helping me paint the walls. I had a couple other friends that would come in and help paint.
But I built that first Abbott Kinney store for like nothing.
SPEAKER_04: And how did you decorate it?
SPEAKER_01: I put my own personal belongings up on the walls. I mean, I took my record collection
and I hammered it up on the walls. I took my skateboard collection and I put it up on the wall.
And all the furniture was vintage furniture that I found at like thrift stores and stuff. That's kind of how our aesthetic of our stores was developed.
SPEAKER_04: And a lot of the stores still kind of look like that. I mean, I've been to the one in Marin County.
I think there's like records like pasted to the walls
and surfboards and guitars.
I mean, it still has that aesthetic.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, one of the big things with me is just realizing it was honestly this like awakening
of like, okay, this isn't just about clothes. This is about building a place.
And like, I remember going to my grand opening and I showed up and it was like a line down the block of people waiting to come in. And the way it made me feel was so much different than just getting a big order. It was like a high. I was just like, this is amazing.
SPEAKER_04: And it seems like based on that experience, you actually decided to start building more stores.
I mean, I think pretty quickly expanded to like four of them. There was one in Malibu, one in Manhattan Beach.
SPEAKER_04: And by the way, were you able to open them all purely
through Cashflow?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, pure, yes. So Cashflow, I was a very, very hard negotiator with my landlords. I basically talked them into starting me at hardly any rent with a sharp escalation of rent. Like I've now negotiated with some of the largest property owners in the country. And they've told me actually like this one guy that actually owns all of the retail in the Wynn Hotel told me I was the hardest negotiator he's ever met. And he owns- Well, what were you pushing for that made you so tough?
SPEAKER_01: The thing is for me in the beginning,
I knew that I didn't want to take a lot of risks.
But I was willing to reward my landlord if I did well. So I would always negotiate where I would have several
months of free rent so that I could have no expense on actually building out the store.
And then I would make sure that I got the store built in half that time so that I could have the store open making money before rent was actually due. So that was one thing. I also like to give myself an out, like in the first year if it's not going well, like I can walk away.
And then basically sharp rent escalations that like made sense to get the landlord to where they wanted to be.
But only when I knew that I was making good enough money. And also I'm very, very good at like taking care of stuff. And like, I don't bother the landlord. I try to repair things on my own. But after I build a couple stores and I've created this buzz, I mean, when I opened Abbott Kinney, my first store,
SPEAKER_01: I think like literally a few months after I opened Abbott Kinney like started to explode. You know, the New York Times did this big story about the aviator nation store and Abbott Kinney becoming a new hotspot.
And then more stores started to open. And so ultimately the landlord of my store, of course,
you know, in his mind, he's just saying, wow, this, now my building is becoming more valuable because Paige has like created this thing
that's like a fashion place now. And so obviously, you know, my rent went up and I was happy to pay it because our sales went up.
And so then I was able to get landlords to take me on
and charge me much less rent just because they thought my store would be good for their street and good for their building.
SPEAKER_04: Paige, as the brick and mortar store, and eventually more than one, were doing well,
how did you find it to be in a position where you were
a boss, where you were managing people and the stores and the brand? I mean, and at one point you let everybody go,
like all, everybody who was working for aviator nation. Tell me what was going on. I mean, did you, was it a combination of you kind of
learning how to run a business and how to lead
and also how to find the right people? Was it all those things and more, I mean, I think 18 people, what happened with these taffers?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so basically after my team got bigger
and having the four stores in the LA area and quite a few retail employees, it actually started to get complicated and there was some drama involved and it was quickly becoming something that was not fun
when it came to managing the people. I started to find out, oh, like this person
doesn't wanna be scheduled to work in Malibu because they're not getting along with the person that works there and then I found out,
SPEAKER_01:
well, so-and-so actually was like sleeping with this other employee. I mean, every other minute there was another dramatic thing happening and it was all based on the employees. So I ended up doing, like you said, this kind of mass firing all the retail employees
SPEAKER_01: and I literally let everyone go,
but I just didn't know how else to deal with all the drama. Like I couldn't tell who was telling the truth and whatever.
I decided at that point that I was going to be
extremely strict with who I hired. I was going to make sure that I checked at least three or four references
and I had certain ways of trying to figure out
the most positive people. I was like, I only want people working for me
that are literally the most positive people that you can imagine.
SPEAKER_04: So how did you start to learn how to become a leader?
I mean, I think about my own experience becoming a leader over two decades or more of doing this work.
I learned over time how to get better at it.
I mean, we make mistakes along that journey, all of us do.
And I have to imagine you did too.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that that period of time before I had to let everybody go, I think that I was really caught up in the business and other things and I wasn't paying close enough attention to the type of person I was hiring.
But like, I started getting super involved with actually doing every single interview myself.
And even until literally until about two years ago, I used to approve every single hire, even the retail level. So I personally, I think what makes me a little bit of a different boss is that I have literally done every single job in the company.
And so I have an understanding of their struggles and what they're going through, whether it's the sewers, you know, I mean, the sewers, the print shop,
all of the dye house, you know, like,
so if I can speak the language of the employee,
then I think that makes me a better leader because I'm able to get down on their level because I've been there.
SPEAKER_04: I think during this period, when you let a bunch of people go,
there was a couple who came to you to propose helping you professionalize the business and that actually turned out to be a really bad decision.
What happened?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I basically was at a trade show and this couple, this man and wife came to me and they were like, we wanna help you manage your production. They kind of said, look, we're gonna manage all of your vendors, all your relationships
with the people that are helping put the garments together and you're just gonna pay us, you know,
a flat fee per garment and we're gonna pay all of them.
And I mean, it sounded like a great deal, you know, and so I hired these people and I gave them a big deposit on the production that was about to be made
and they disappeared with all of my money
and they filed bankruptcy and pretty much disappeared and they had all my designs and they had all my samples and they had all this, I mean, it was like, whoa, I think that maybe coming out of small town, Texas, whatever, maybe I was naive or something, I don't know. Like I was not expecting it at all and it was a huge chunk of money and it made me just immediately harden.
Like I went from really kind of trusting everybody to then being like, I don't trust anybody because I didn't wanna tell anybody and that's another thing, you know.
SPEAKER_04: It's humiliating, it feels like- It's humiliating and like I have this team of people
SPEAKER_01: around me that I've been preaching to like, hey, positive, positive,
yet I am like in shambles internally, but I have to put on my happy face as a boss and like pretend like everything's okay because the last thing I want is the whole company
to think, oh my God, she just gave all this money to these people that disappeared and what's gonna happen with all these orders we have
on these products that these people were supposed to be making.
SPEAKER_01: But that was the moment that I decided
I was gonna have my own factory
because I needed to control everything.
SPEAKER_04: You were gonna build your own factory or you were gonna work with your own?
SPEAKER_01: No, I was gonna basically build my own factory.
With what money?
SPEAKER_01: So at that point, I think I still, I had the credit line with the bank. I probably leaned on that credit line at that point and so that's how I was able to then,
basically what I did is I bought out a factory that was doing work for me. I bought all the machines, I took over the employees and I hired the guy that was running the factory to work for me.
And I realized that it was my responsibility
that the garments were made fairly and the people were getting paid properly because if you hire a factory to make clothes in LA
and those employees for that factory are not getting paid properly
and are not getting workman's comp and all the things, it is my liability even though it's not my factory because I'm the one that is selling the garments.
And so I just said, you know what? I'm gonna hire my own people and I'm gonna make sure that it's all done perfectly.
SPEAKER_04: And I mean, you were still a relatively small business. I mean, I think that by 2012, from what I understand,
you're doing about $5 million in revenue, which is still a small business. You were still, as I say, margins were probably still fairly narrow, fairly slim.
SPEAKER_01:
Yes.
SPEAKER_04: And you could charge more for your sweatshirts and t-shirts and sweatpants because there was demand but also the cost was higher. You were making this primarily in Los Angeles.
Did you ever at that point or since then think, we really should start making these in Asian factories where it'll cost us a fraction to make these products and we can have way higher margins, which is what virtually every fashion brand does. Even the premium fashion brands. You go into Neiman Marcus today and look at the high-end designer brands
and much of the material, much of the clothing is made in China. And the prices are astronomical.
Did you ever consider doing that?
SPEAKER_01: No, I never did. And the reason is, I mean, there's a few reasons, but I truly love that this is an American-made product.
I've always been excited about the factory experience.
I mean, when I was working closely with the small factory
and I was becoming friends with those people making the clothes,
I think I just felt so connected to all those people that I just never imagined taking the work away from them.
SPEAKER_04: Everything is still made in the US?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything's made in California.
SPEAKER_04: And I mean, you can, just to play devil's advocate, there is high quality clothing made in China. The quality of raw materials can be very high.
I mean, the only difference is the cost of labor is a lot lower. So is there a world where you could justify in your mind
making things in China or Vietnam or another country that would be equally as good, but with just lower labor costs?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the thing is, like, I'm like, look, I've already established this brand at this price. People are buying the product for this price. So they're already giving me the money that I need to make it here. Because I'm not going to lower my prices if I take it overseas. I mean, I've already established the price. And so it's just going to be more money in my pocket. And I don't need that money because I have the money I need to run the business. I'm not trying to open 100 stores. I love doing this slow. And I'm like, so why would I change it? And really, I have done research and I have friends that make stuff overseas. And even my brother made his shoes overseas. And he told me and others have told me, it gets really complicated. I mean, if something is made overseas and it arrives, you can't turn it back. You can't say, oh, that color is not exactly the color I want. I mean, and I'll tell you every single week,
SPEAKER_01: I make changes in what's going on in my factory because there's things that have to be adjusted
SPEAKER_01: all the time. I mean, every lot of fabric shrinks a little bit differently.
And sometimes I'm like, oh, this collection is not selling as fast as I want it to. So don't make any more of those. Like literally stop the machines. I mean, we just stopped a whole collection we were doing for this music festival happening in Egypt because of what's happening in Israel. Like we literally were able to stop it. So it's that, it's like I have the ability to pivot so quickly, which ultimately I think makes me a better brand and a better company.
SPEAKER_04: One of the things that I'm curious about how you've dealt with over the years is you've been dogged by Adidas. Adidas saw the stripes and I think already in 2012, they filed a cease and desist or maybe a lawsuit,
but they saw stripes even though they look, I think very different, but Adidas doesn't think so. They think that the stripes violate their trademark.
How, I mean, first of all, that must've been scary. You're the biggest or second biggest apparel brand probably in the world after Nike is coming after you.
It must be nerve wracking.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that was very scary.
SPEAKER_04: And that's your whole, that's your brand, that's your look.
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
So I did what I do and I like did some research on it and I found out that of course, like they have the three stripes is their trademark. But how did you, how did you fend that off? I mean, that's. It was a battle. I mean, at first, you know, I basically said, no, I don't think that it's similar. And then it went on for years.
SPEAKER_04: Did it cost you a lot of money to fight that?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's one of the things that's really crazy about business is even when you're not doing something wrong
you still have to pay to defend it, especially when you're a young entrepreneur, because obviously Adidas has a ton of money for legal fees. And when I, in 2012, you know, I did not.
And you know, like I'm going to take out a loan to defend this, but like, if I were to lose then I lose the money and I lose the company.
SPEAKER_04: How did you resolve it?
SPEAKER_01: Basically what happened was in 2012 there were a couple of garments that did have three stripes on them. I basically said, okay, I said, I'll stop doing the three stripe garments but I'm going to continue doing the four stripe.
And so they like basically disappeared for several years and I stopped doing three stripes. And so anyway, they came like years down the road.
I don't remember, I want to say maybe 2016 or something. They came back and they said, okay,
now we think your four stripes are confusingly similar. And I was like, no guys, we made this agreement.
And so anyway, in 2016, you know, I had a little bit more money. And I think at that point I actually had insurance for trademark protection. And so this went on for a long time and we did go through mediation and all this stuff.
And then in the end, they pretty much let go of it. We just settled on the fact that I wouldn't do three stripes and I would really not do anything with four stripes that was confusing with their three stripes
because one of the stripes blended into the background of the garment or something.
SPEAKER_04: And for all, as far as you know, that's over.
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01:
As far as I know, that's over.
SPEAKER_04: Do you remember in 2016, roughly what your revenue was?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was doing about six and a half million. I had like five or six stores then.
SPEAKER_04: So 2016, you're about six and a half million. So each store is doing about a million dollars in revenue
because it's all pretty much at that point being sold in stores. Your online sales were probably relatively small
compared to your brick and mortar sales in 2016.
Oh, for sure.
And so going from a six and a half million dollar business to a 20 million dollar or $30 million business, sometimes it requires advertising and marketing.
Tell me a little bit about your strategy around that.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it was really about opening, these brick and mortar stores, I thought having the stores was kind of like a billboard. I'm like, if I have stores in these prime spots,
then that is going to naturally get the customer. And then later on, I can grow the online business.
But first, for somebody to pay the price point
that I was demanding,
they would have to feel the product and try it on because it really is, it's a product that a lot of the value of it
is the comfort level. But if the product's good, then the marketing in my opinion was just gonna kind of take care of itself by like the word of mouth.
SPEAKER_01:
And in 2018, at that point I had, I think, eight stores. In 2019, I decided that was going to be my year of just focused on opening stores.
I literally spent my entire year on the road and I opened a new store every two months. I opened five stores in 2019.
SPEAKER_04: So, all right, so you are growing steadily
and you hit, what was your revenue in 2019?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so in 2019, I was up to 27 million in sales.
SPEAKER_04: So, you'd gone from six and a half in 2016 to 27 million three years later, which is a really nice, healthy growth. Tell me about COVID, COVID hits.
And this is, I mean, especially given that you were heavily in brick and mortar, invested in brick and mortar, what did you do? You just shut down all those stores, obviously, and you were gonna lose a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01: What happened was, I remember having two or three days to basically close everything.
And I'm gonna have this huge overhead. And I was like, from now through the weekend,
or it might've been 24 hours or so, I think it was 24 hours or something like that, I was like, I want to put out an email that says,
everything that we sell is gonna go toward paying the employees during shutdown because I need a lot of money to carry us through however long this is gonna be. I was like, I don't know what else to do. So we sent out an email, I stayed up all night.
SPEAKER_01: I looked at orders I had for Bloomingdale's that I knew were gonna get canceled, and I put that stuff on the website. And at that time we were doing, I think, around $30,000 online a day or something.
And I put out that email and in 24 hours, we did over a million dollars on our website.
And that basically bought me four months of overhead.
SPEAKER_04: Wow, I mean, your sales exploded during COVID and other apparel brands did too, Viore and other athleisure wear, so-called athleisure wear brands did.
Did you anticipate that? Did you expect that to happen or were you just totally surprised at what happened with your sales?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that a big part of it honestly is this email that I sent out. Because if you think about it, a million and a half is a lot. That's a lot of product to basically go into the hands of all these people that then are just talking to people on Zoom calls and stuff, and then they all see the clothes.
SPEAKER_04:
I mean, did you have an influencer strategy? No, not at all.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing, did not do any of that. Nothing.
SPEAKER_04: Because there was a point where all of a sudden,
I mean, every teenage girl between the age of,
I don't know, 12 and 18, I'm seeing wearing aviator nation
and I started to ask around and somebody said, oh, this is all over TikTok.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I mean, I'm all about letting the stores kind of just post and whatever, but I mean, we don't really have a huge social following either. I think we have less than 300,000 followers. Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_04: Well, it took a lot of people a long time to discover it because you started in 2006 and not now. For sure, definitely.
SPEAKER_01: 2020 is when a lot of people first heard about this brand
SPEAKER_04: as 14 years in, so I mean, 14, overnight success, but in 14 years, right?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04: This is what I wonder about. Your brand is on fire, right?
It is expected from what I understand about $130 million in revenue this year. So obviously growing very fast,
SPEAKER_04: but I wonder you look at a brand like, let's say, Tom's, your brother's, the company he started and he's not involved anymore, it was sold.
It's not as buzzy as it was five years ago, 10 years ago.
And I wonder how you think about staying ahead of the curve.
There is a real risk in fashion, especially with TikTok trends moving as still in out of consciousness, like in the blink of an eye
that people might not be as interested in this in a year. So how do you future-proof what you're putting out into the world?
SPEAKER_01: I kind of attribute this, my strategy to my personality, which is basically that I literally want something different
every month, I'm all over the place. I really just constantly have ideas
for new design ideas and stuff like that. And even though a lot of the product that we still sell obviously is the core product,
we basically drop a new collection almost every week.
Because for me, I mean, I'm bored. Like I don't necessarily wear the stripes that often. I wear them every once in a while, but like right now I'm wearing a full tiger sweatsuit. Like I like the kind of crazy stuff personally. And I think that that's the only way.
SPEAKER_04:
I have to assume that you're no longer the sole designer. You've got other designers now.
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm the sole designer.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so this is interesting to me. When our researcher contacted you, you responded, this is what you, I'm gonna read what you responded to there. She said, I personally approve all operational practices,
store decor, holiday decorations at the stores, window displays, new product displays, all staff goals bonuses.
You'll read nightly closing reports from each location. You approve everything down to the tote bag and giveaway, koosies that we hand out with purchases. And obviously you still design the clothes. So you are, it seems like you're really involved
in a lot of things and a lot of things
that might maybe over time, you're better off letting go.
SPEAKER_01: Sure, the thing is what I have done over the years
is I have built a small team of people that has worked very, very closely with me for like 10 plus years. And they know me so well that it's like a super efficient way of making decisions. So like they're able to almost read my mind and bring me like the top three choices. But out of the 20 decisions that I make a day, let's say, you know, on approvals, there's still one or two like pivotal things that I catch that's being done wrong. And sure, there are certain things that I let go of, but I also have this belief that like, you really need to keep your eye on things when you're in a period of major growth, which we are still in.
SPEAKER_04: When I interviewed your brother, he was still very much involved in Tom's. And then of course it was sold and he's not involved anymore. I mean, what, tell me what, how you see this sort of the future playing out. I mean, you own this company.
I'm sure there's been interest in either investing or in potentially even buying out the brand.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the thing is I've had a lot of offers for hundreds of millions of dollars, but I do believe that if somebody comes in and tries to like make my company 10 times the size
that it is now, that it won't be a good thing for the brand.
I think that at the price point and the customer and what I'm doing, it can't be a brand for everyone.
I just feel like why rock the boat? Like I don't need more money. Thankfully, like I didn't take on any debt. I was really good to pay back everything. And so I don't wanna bring on somebody that I just have to answer to just for a lot of money. It's not worth it to me to have an extra 500,
600 million in the bank. So then I have to report to like a group of people.
SPEAKER_04: When you think about your journey, I mean, it's been a slow growth for sure. And now you're really emerging as a unknown fashion brand.
How much of where you are today do you attribute to your hard work and how much do you think has to do with the luck of people just discovering it?
SPEAKER_01: I think that it's really the hard work. I mean, me and my team of people
have really done the manual labor.
I didn't do all the things that people do when they have a huge investment allowance. And we did it ourselves.
We figured it out ourselves. We made mistakes. We fixed them fast. And I'm a big believer in not spending a lot of money to hire these big people to come in and like blow up your brand with marketing
and influencers and all this stuff
because there's not hard work in that. There's just not. And then you don't feel like you really did it. So it just, the feeling of satisfaction I have inside is deeper than just seeing the money that we're bringing in.
SPEAKER_04: That's Paige Mycoskie, founder of Aviator Nation.
By the way, according to Paige's mom, Paige and her brother Blake started their respective companies on the very same day in 2006, February 26, to be exact, which also happens to be Paige's birthday.
And here's another connection. Paige actually designed the logo for Blake's company, Toms. It's a riff on the Argentinian flag with blue and white stripes. And if you haven't heard my interview with Blake about Toms, go back and check it out. It's another really great story.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. And if you want to contact us for any reason, our email address is hibt at id.wondery.com. This episode was produced by Alex Chung with music composed by Ramtin Ereblui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Rommel Wood. Our audio engineer was Josephine Nioni. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Katherine Seifer, Kerry Thompson, John Isabella, Chris Masini, Carla Estevez, and Malia Agudelo. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.
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