Yahoo Finance PacSun Brings Gen Z Customers in as Cocreators
Generation Z wants to be seen and heard, and youth-focused retailer PacSun is listening.
Not content to just pay lip service to its customer demographic, the retailer draws consumers into every aspect of the company. Whether using its own Gen Z consumers as models and creators in its PacSun Collective advertising campaigns (tag line: “Created for you, by you”), enlisting customer brainpower and artistic input, or deploying Gen Z staffers as trend-spotting “field associates,” PacSun taps into the inclusive, highly engaged youth zeitgeist at every turn.
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“Collective thinking, community and co-creation” have been a sharp focus for PacSun in recent years, said Richard Cox, PacSun’s vice president of men’s merchandising and design, and head of global partnerships, told Arthur Zaczkiewicz, executive editor of strategic content at WWD, during a fireside chat for business hub Retail Rx. “If there’s one throughline that we’re now hyper-focused on, is we want to be youth-focused with a true purpose of trying to inspire youth to create a better future.”
For inspiration, PacSun looks at everything through a lens of “meeting that cultural intersection of fashion, music, art and sport.” This has included fashion collaborations with Jerry Lorenzo of Fear of God, music partnerships with A$AP Rocky, Willow Smith and up-and-coming musicians for a music festival campaign, sports partnerships with Formula 1 as well as the L.A. Rams, where the retailer donates more than $1 million worth of product each year to kids in the Los Angeles area, and art partnerships like Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“The Met partnership caught a lot of people off guard, but art is an important driver of culture and our customer thinks it’s important. Plus, the Met Gala is a very influential, key fashion moment,” Cox said. PacSun has released a few Met apparel collections over the past two years, highlighting a shift away from its skate and surf roots. “[The Met] just seemed like a perfect marriage based on what we wanted to do, how we wanted to address art in a cool way.”
To learn more about how PacSun stays “forever young” while engaging the next generation of youth, watch the conversation.
The SKU View is a fireside chat series on Retail Rx, a business hub for essential retail industry news, insights and perspectives.
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