You Might Also Like: Redefiners

**Marla Oates** (0:00)
Call them change makers.

**Thomas Chamorro** (0:01)
Call them rule breakers.

**Marla Oates** (0:03)
We call them redefiners.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Redefiners. I'm Marla Oates, a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates. Joining me once again for today's episode is my wonderful co-host, Dr. Thomas Chamorro, for music.

**Thomas Chamorro** (0:26)
Hey Marla, and hi everybody. It's great to be with you all today.

**Marla Oates** (0:30)
Good to see you. Before we get started, just a quick reminder to our listeners that you can find all episodes of Redefiners and Leadership Lounge on YouTube.
If you're watching Redefiners on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. For our audio listeners, don't forget to rate Redefiners wherever you get your podcasts. We love to see your feedback.

**Thomas Chamorro** (0:52)
So, Marla, I don't know if you know this, but there are 1.9 billion people in the world who are considered Gen Z, so Generation C, roughly 25 percent of the world's population. They're now the second largest generation ever, just behind Gen Alpha, and it's a sheer scale that explains why so many companies, and particularly why so many leaders and CEOs are really fighting hard to understand them better than anybody else, and to use this knowledge to kind of connect their culture and products with this really, really large segment of the world.

**Marla Oates** (1:28)
It's a great point, and perhaps nowhere is this more difficult than in fashion. Capturing the loyalty of this 25 percent of the population is not straightforward. Leaders in this space must navigate a lot of different pressures. We've got evolving customer tastes and priorities, the constant work of building and sustaining a brand, lots of rapid technological change and, of course, supply chain volatility, just to name a few.

**Thomas Chamorro** (1:54)
So there's a lot of challenges. Leaders are clearly being tested on their ability to navigate these and other related challenges. And obviously, as usual, some are faring better than others. And while you and I might not quite fit the demographic or the target audience for our guest companies, our kids certainly do.

**Marla Oates** (2:13)
Our guest today is at a brand that's become much bigger than simply a brand retailer. They're known for oversized denim, cargo, graphic tees, and a lot of streetwear that the kids all are living in. They've also done a really great job at tapping into the co-labs that you see kind of across the space. So whether it's Formula One, Adidas, Influencer Partnerships, they've really figured out how to stay at the cultural intersection of sports, fashion, and multimedia.
So I'm really curious to talk with our guests today about how they've managed not to just lead through the challenges that we've talked about, but also redefine the brand and the company at a global scale to really stay relevant with a finicky customer base. Not an easy task.

**Thomas Chamorro** (2:57)
Not easy at all. And so to help us dig into all of that and more, our guest today is Brieane Olson, who is the Chief Executive Officer at Pacsun. Before becoming Pacsun's CEO in 2023, Brieane served as the company's president, where she helped redefine the company through a digital-first approach, international expansions, and high-profile collaborations with cultural icons.
She also serves on multiple retail and leadership boards, and is the author of a recently released book with the title, Co-Created, The Cultural Strategy That Redefined Pacsun.

**Marla Oates** (3:36)
Brie, welcome to Redefiners.

**Brieane Olson** (3:38)
Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here with you both.

**Marla Oates** (3:42)
Let's go back a little bit and ground ourselves in the brand. So, Pacsun started as a small surf shop in Southern California and expanded quite quickly through the 1990s, early 2000s, more than 1,300 stores across the US.
Now, you've been with Pacsun for nearly 20 years and really have rode the highs and lows, you know, through to bankruptcy in 2016, which, as we understand, was a result of, you know, shifting mall traffic, rapid growth of e-commerce. What were some of the challenges that the company was facing over the past, call it, 10 years? And how did you and the leadership team help reinvent the company after coming out of bankruptcy?

**Brieane Olson** (4:23)
Starting at the company nearly two decades ago, the first day that I joined, I was put on a project called Project Mavericks, which was essentially a transformation project pre-bankruptcy.
And we did a lot of good work to dig in and understand the consumer. And we did a lot of the roadmapping to understand what we needed to do differently. But then we were faced with the bankruptcy. We were faced with a lot of different leadership role transitions. And I think we really hadn't focused on the internal work that we needed to do inside the company to shift our thinking and really lead with purpose, to be able to come out and establish ourselves as a mission purpose-based organization and brand. That our purpose today is to inspire the next generation of youth. And to do that by building a really strong community at the intersection of music, fashion, art and sport. Really, our entire operating structure is around the power of co-creation. So while I'll say 15 years ago, 10 years ago, we were hyper focused on collaborations, today we're very focused on co-creation. And there's a very important distinction between the two.