While 2025 did not have a song of the summer, it had the denim wars. American Eagle, Gap, Levi’s, Abercrombie and others poured millions into marketing investments and celebrity-driven campaigns, all battling for the same trend-savvy shoppers.
The prize: billions in sales.
Analysts project denim sales will reach $114.6 billion by 2030, with Gen Z and Gen Alpha driving 42% of purchases. That makes them the most valuable and volatile shoppers in the market. They can crown or kill a style overnight, forcing brands to spend millions to stay in their favor.
Enter PacSun as a formidable player under CEO Brieane Olson. Rather than competing on spend, Olson has centered PacSun’s growth on listening, embedding the customer voice into decisions across product, marketing and data.
PacSun Youth Advisory Council Puts Gen Z In The Boardroom
Olson’s next move is to bring consumers even closer to the business. This week, PacSun launched its first formalized Youth Advisory Council, a group of Gen Z and Gen Alpha members who will partner directly with executives in workshops and mentorship sessions, weighing in on everything from denim fits to campaign ideas.
The first Youth Advisory Council cohort includes:
- Anna Sitar (@annaxsitar) – Popular TikTok creator with more than 12 million followers and co-creator of the ANNAXPACSUN swimwear line
- Jabari and Malik Williams (@william_twinss) – TikTok twin creators and frequent Pacsun partners
- Life.w.Bex (@life.w.bex) – Rising lifestyle voice known for GRWM content and self-expression
- Sienna Lewis (@sienna_.lewis) – Micro-influencer and president of Chapman University’s Black Art Association
- Valera Djordjevic (@valeradjordjevic) – Emerging tastemaker and model with global appeal
- Teala Dunn (@ttlyteala) – Actress and creator who frequently appears at Pacsun events and activations
- Anais and Mirabelle Lee (@anaisandmirabelle) – Twin actresses and change-makers entering Stanford this year.
Olson described her focus as a long-term business commitment, “At Pacsun, we’ve always believed the best ideas come from building alongside our community, not just for them. For years, we’ve invited creators, artists, and cultural voices to shape our brand with PacSun Collective, Artist Network Series and other collaborations. And now with the launch of the Youth Advisory Council, we’re taking that vision to the next level.”
TikTok Creators Drive PacSun Sales For Gen Z, Gen Alpha Shoppers
The council is only one piece of PacSun’s broader creator strategy. In late 2023, Lyla Biggs, a member of PacSun’s TikTok affiliate program with about 5,000 followers, posted a casual video styling the Casey Jean. Within 48 hours leading into Black Friday, the style sold 11,000 pairs.
Over the next few months, it moved more than 60,000 pairs on TikTok, helping drive more than 200,000 denim units overall and more than $20 million in sales from TikTok alone.
Chief Merchandising Officer Richard Cox put it plainly, “Lyla was the spark. She did not pitch the Casey jeans. She just wore it her way, and people saw themselves. That is when we realized our job is not to pick trends. It is to see who really loves the product and let them lead. Our shoppers know better than us, so the last thing we want to be is a gatekeeper.”
PacSun’s Digital Infrastructure And AI Investments: Speed Is Everything
PacSun has invested heavily in infrastructure to capture every customer interaction. Transactions across 300 stores, e-commerce, loyalty scans, TikTok Shop sales, creator posts and affiliate conversions all flow into systems built by Chief Digital and Information Officer Shirley Gao.
For Gao, speed is everything “Gen Z and Gen Alpha will not tell you what is wrong," Gao said. "They just leave. We have to capture signals fast enough to adapt before they move on.”
That urgency has defined PacSun’s digital strategy. Young customers discover, decide and discard styles at the pace of social feeds, so Gao has built systems to keep up.
“We have unified first-party data, from transactions to loyalty to on-site behavior, into a single source of truth. That is what personalizes the journey and improves conversion,” she said.
It is also why PacSun invests early and directly in the platforms where its audience lives. “We were one of the first fashion brands to be live on TikTok Shop. We piloted enterprise integrations with their dev team and scaled from there,” Gao explained. The partnership has delivered tens of millions in sales while giving PacSun visibility into which products and creators deliver results.
Olson created PacSun’s AI Council and an 18-month adoption roadmap, giving Gao’s team a clear mandate. Gao stresses that there is no off-the-shelf technology solution for this pace, but data is the key input. “There is no one-size tech stack. We align tools to the business we are running and the customer we serve. We moved enterprise data to Snowflake early so that AI would not be blocked by basic infrastructure. Data is not our bottleneck.”
The next frontier is Agentic AI, which Gao sees not as an experiment but as a necessity for keeping pace with youth culture. “Without first-party data, predictive tools dont function," Gao said. "With it, we can make sure PacSun anticipates what works and shows up with relevant, credible answers when customers ask AI where to shop.”
PacSun’s Long-Term Growth Strategy: Co-Creation, Creators And Data
Competitors are spending heavily to win their share of sales and loyalty. PacSun is making a different wager. By combining co-creation, creator signals and data systems, the company has built an engine for capturing information at scale and acting on it faster than rivals.
Olson put it simply: “Our company's most important shareholder is our customer. Everything we do has to pass their gut check.”
In a market where the audience can shift overnight, PacSun is betting that its ability to learn and adapt in real time is the ultimate competitive advantage.