Jan 1, 2024 · 1h 8m · how-i-built-this
Aviator Nation: Paige Mycoskie
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, Aviator Nation founder Paige Mycoskie details how she built a vintage 1970s-inspired surf and athleisure brand from a self-taught sewing hobby into a $130+ million apparel empire. Through hands-on design, domestic factory ownership, experiential retail, and fierce independence, Mycoskie turned vibrant handmade sweatpants and hoodies into an iconic lifestyle phenomenon.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 32.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.0 Guest teaching 3.5 Guest disagreement 1.3 Guy pushing back 2.0
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:03:48 Refusing outside designers
Paige directly counters Guy's assumption that she must have hired a design team, insisting she remains the sole creative force.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 1:04:10 Reading micromanagement questionnaireGuy quotes Paige's operational list back to her, directly challenging whether approving promotional koozies and holiday decor is a sustainable executive strategy.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 56:00 Operational upside of local manufacturingPaige reframes Guy's devil's advocate question about overseas margins by demonstrating how domestic production enables instantaneous manufacturing pivots that overseas factories cannot match.
Guy holds their own ▶ 55:20 Pressing on Asian manufacturing marginsGuy pushes back against domestic production dogmatism by citing luxury retail benchmarks in China and asking Paige to justify leaving profit margins on the table.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Competing on The Amazing Race with Blake | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy links Paige's story to his previous interview with her brother Blake. Paige supplies novel background details regarding their casting on The Amazing Race and their near-victory. | |
| Developing an Eye for Retail at ZJ Boarding House | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Guy admits total ignorance of garment construction techniques and asks Paige to explain applique. Paige details her intuitive buying background and self-taught sewing journey. | |
| Parallel Entrepreneurial Journeys of the Mycoskie Siblings | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy inquires about the simultaneous launch of Toms and Aviator Nation. Paige explains how both siblings entered fashion independently in the exact same month. | |
| Mid-Roll Listener Spotlight and Show Announcement | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about her Texas retreat and design methodology. Paige describes reverse-engineering thrifted shirts into patterns without formal fashion training. | |
| Crafting the Aviator Nation Name and Sunset Logo | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy contextualizes mid-2000s Southern California fashion trends and teases Paige about California tropes. Paige explains how she walked cold into Fred Segal and set early price points. | |
| Fulfilling Early Orders and Transitioning to Local Production | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Guy references the downtown LA manufacturing scene during the American Apparel era and asks how Paige maintained quality. Paige explains having to find specialized detail shops willing to do non-standard stitching. | |
| Abbott Kinney Street Fair and Las Vegas Trade Show Success | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Paige recounts turning local street fair proceeds into a Vegas trade show booth that yielded $150k in orders. Guy facilitates the narrative smoothly. | |
| Mid-Roll Transition and Show Return | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Guy asks about the aesthetic of her stores and probes what made her such a tough negotiator with retail landlords. Paige details her strategy of trading rent-free buildout periods for steep back-end escalators. | |
| Retail Staffing Challenges and Cultural Reset | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Guy brings up specific research about Paige firing her entire 18-person retail staff and compares it to his own leadership learning curve. Paige explains her cultural reset and strict reference checking. | |
| Factory Scam and Establishing Dedicated Local Manufacturing | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Guy presses Paige on how she financed acquiring factory operations after a scam couple absconded with her deposits. Paige details garment brand legal liability laws in California that forced her to bring manufacturing fully in-house. | |
| Commitment to Domestic Production and Operational Flexibility | 6 | 6 | 3 | 5 | Guy plays devil's advocate, arguing that luxury brands produce in China for far higher margins and questions why she doesn't offshore. Paige firmly rejects the premise, explaining that domestic production grants crucial real-time agility to halt or pivot runs immediately. | |
| Retail-Led Growth Strategy and Scaling to 2019 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy breaks down her unit economics across stores in 2016 and asks about marketing tactics. Paige explains relying on physical retail storefronts as living billboards rather than spending on traditional advertising. | |
| Navigating COVID-19 and the Viral Athleisure Boom | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Guy brings up competitors like Vuori and asks if influencer marketing sparked their pandemic explosion. Paige clarifies that an organic direct email campaign to support furloughed staff drove their viral boom. | |
| Rapid Product Drops and Hands-On Creative Control | 6 | 5 | 3 | 6 | Guy challenges Paige on the sustainability of extreme micromanagement, reading her own researcher responses back to her where she admits approving everything down to koozies. Paige asserts she remains the sole designer and defends hands-on oversight during high growth. | |
| Staying Independent and Maintaining Brand Integrity | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Guy poses the classic luck versus skill question and asks about buyout interest. Paige firmly explains why she turns down nine-figure buyout offers to protect brand integrity. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Mycoskie: We lost The Amazing Race by four minutes
“We ended up losing the race by four minutes and In the end, and I always joke with him that he owes me a million dollars, and he agrees.”
Mycoskie: Neutral apparel looks cooler paired with bold pieces
“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.”
Mycoskie taught herself sewing and pattern making using DVDs
“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.”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation's logo lines represent a sunset
“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.”
Mycoskie: In-person pitching beats cold calling retail buyers
“So it's like the calling people thing just doesn't work. Like, 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…”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation's first Fred Segal wholesale order was $8,000
“And so she wrote an order, a big order, and I think it added up to about 8000 dollars, and I had my first order.”
Mycoskie funded initial Aviator Nation production with an $8,000 bank loan
“And I went to Wells Fargo and they gave me a loan for 8000 dollars and boom, that was it. That was the money that I used to make the stuff.”
Mycoskie: LA garment factories initially rejected Aviator Nation as too complicated
“Literally nobody wanted to touch it. They thought it was too complicated, and they were all making, like, basic t-shirts.”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation made over $8,500 in one day at street fair
“I spent 500 dollars. 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, 8600 dollars in one day selling clothes at that street festival.”
Aviator Nation secured $150,000 in orders at its first Vegas trade show
“We had sold a 150,000 dollars worth of clothes.”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation opened early retail stores purely through cash flow
“And by the way, were you able to open them all purely through cashflow? Yes. Pure.”
Mycoskie's strategy for low-risk, cashflow-positive retail leases
“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…”
Mycoskie fired Aviator Nation's entire retail staff over store drama
“So I ended up doing, like you said, this kind of mass firing all the retail employees. And I literally let everyone go, but I just didn't know how else to deal with all the drama.”
Mycoskie personally approved every single Aviator Nation hire until around 2022
“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.”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation acquired its contractor factory, machinery, and staff
“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.”
Brands bear ultimate liability for contractor factory labor practices
“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 g…”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation manufactures all of its products in California
“Yeah, everything's made in California.”
Mycoskie: Rapid operational pivots make Aviator Nation a better company
“I have the ability to pivot so quickly, which ultimately I think makes me a better brand and a better company.”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation generated about $6.5M in revenue in 2016
“Yeah, I was doing about six and a half million. I had like five or six stores then.”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation hit $27M in sales in 2019
“Yeah, so in 2019, I was up to twenty seven million in sales.”
Aviator Nation generated over $1M in online sales in 24 hours
“And at that time we were doing, I think around 30,000 dollars online a day or something. And I put out that email and in 24 hours we did like over a million dollars. On our website.”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation had no influencer marketing strategy
“I mean, did you have an influencer strategy? No, not at all. Nothing? Did not do any of that? Nothing.”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation drops a new collection almost every week
“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.”
Mycoskie: Aviator Nation received buyout offers worth hundreds of millions
“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.”