Paige Mycoskie, who is now worth an estimated $380 million, unveils expansion plans for her trendy clothing brand including new stores and product lines.
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he 43-year-old founder of uber popular clothing brand Aviator Nation, Paige Mycoskie, is curled over a desktop computer in the home office of her lakeside Austin mansion. Catching her in the throes of a typical, not at all glamorous, workday, feels almost unnatural. But it’s a busy time for Mycoskie, who just signed a lease for Aviator Nation’s first permanent storefront in New York City at 93 Mercer St. in Soho.
“I’m actually designing the store right now,” the fashion brand owner told Forbes in an April interview, shortly after snapping up the 2,700 square feet around the corner from Levi’s and Uniqlo’s U.S. flagship. Mycoskie wasn’t sure then exactly how it would look but promised Aviator Nation’s NYC hub would be “unique and special” to the area, like her brand’s 17 other locations. “I like to usually celebrate local artists and stuff. I’m a huge fan of Madonna and she’s from New York so I’ll have something related to Madonna in that space,” she riffs, adding: “I’ll have a record wall with lots of local albums and stuff like that for sure.”
Mycoskie, who started Aviator Nation back in 2007 while working at a Venice Beach surf shop, is still very much hands on with her brand, personally sketching out everything from its storefronts to its designer sweatpants. This has helped make her one of America’s richest self-made women, worth an estimated $380 million, according to Forbes’ newly released 2023 rankings. She owns 100% of the company, which took off during the COVID-19 pandemic among TikTok teens and twentysomethings. (The company did so well the Aviator Nation founder paid herself a $47.5 million dividend in 2021). This year she’s an estimated $30 million richer, thanks to an increase in revenues to $130 million in 2022, up from $110 million the previous year.
It’s not quite the growth Mycoskie was predicting. At this time last year, Mycoskie told Forbes she thought the company’s revenues would at least double by 2023. Today, the fashion designer maintains that it’s still an achievable goal for revenue to reach $200 million by the end of this year, largely citing her California-based brand’s arrival on the opposite coast. Mycoskie tested out a two-week pop-up shop in Manhattan in December, which she described as a success, and opened Aviator Nation’s first East Coast location in the Hamptons at the end of May.
“I was pretty confident that we needed to open a store in New York regardless just because I think our second biggest revenue stream online is in New York and we have no stores there,” she says, noting that it took “forever” to find the “right spot.” While there may not be as much of an appetite for swimsuits and surfboards, Mycoskie is hoping that the colder climate will push customers toward her pricey jackets, like its $875 puffers and $495 windbreakers, which she says already make up about 8% of the company’s sales.
On top of its East Coast debut, Aviator Nation will soon open a behemoth store in Nashville, its first in Tennessee. Mycoskie signed the lease to take over a building in The Gulch, a trendy and centrally located neighborhood, previously occupied by local retailer Two Old Hippies, in April 2022. The 8,500-square foot space, which is scheduled to open in August or September, will double as a live-music venue on the weekends, seizing on the city’s thriving music scene, according to Mycoskie. It will look similar to Aviator Nation’s existing concert space in its Malibu store, known as Aviator Nation Dreamland (the Nashville store will have the same name).
Though most of Aviator Nation’s sales come from its website, Mycoskie says brick and mortar continues to be an important tool for brand awareness. “In Nashville, we’ve just had a sign on the door for the past several months while we get the permits and everything and it’s really funny because just from that–I can’t imagine how this is possible–but I looked at our quarter one numbers and we are seeing a rise in Nashville,” she explains, adding that “experiences” like Aviator Nation “Dreamland” and “RIDE,” an exercise studio the company opened in Los Angeles in 2022, are successfully driving new customers to the brand.
Moving forward, however, Mycoskie says she plans to focus less on opening new stores and more on expanding into product categories, which she sees as the key way to “really escalate” revenues. She’s currently in the process of designing Aviator Nation’s own sunglasses line (a natural progression for a brand named for Mycoskie’s love of the designer shades), as well as footwear (she highlights “sandals” to sell in her stores near the beach) and bags. “Rolling out some new categories I’m passionate about will be the next stage of our growth,” explains Mycoskie, though she hesitates to nail down any specific timeline due to the complexities of producing new types of products with a U.S.-based supply chain.
In fact, all of her items are made in a factory in California. Creating everything locally can sometimes be a headache, but Mycoskie says it has been helpful overall in navigating a challenging retail environment over the past year marked by high inflation and a dropoff in discretionary spending among American shoppers. She says she bumped prices “a little bit” for about half of Aviator Nation’s already expensive clothing due to the rising cost of materials, but otherwise has been able to keep things largely “consistent” thanks to the company’s local production. The company’s gross margins are between 70% and 80%, depending on the product, according to Mycoskie.
“I’ve always kept a really tight inventory. I don’t overproduce,” says Mycoskie, noting that payroll for her employees and fabric are her “two biggest expenses.” “Right now I’m not really slowing down. So far we’re still selling out of the product.”
The all-American aspect of her brand has also helped battle a growing number of “dupes,” or copy-cat products popping up on the market, says Mycoskie. (On TikTok, videos directing shoppers toward the best “Aviator Nation sweatpants dupes” have over 8.5 million views.) “I haven’t really seen any Made In America companies knocking us off yet,” says the Aviator Nation founder. She says she has a lawyer reaching out to those ripping off her brand the most closely. “It’s like, it’s such a huge difference [in quality],” she adds. “I can’t stress out about it too much.”
Mycoskie is trying to de-stress in general. That includes taking on projects based on personal whims, like messaging the Norwegian EDM star Kygo, her “favorite DJ,” on LinkedIn to ask if she could make the merchandise for the destination festivals hosted by his brand, the Palm Tree Crew. “We became friends right away,” says Mycoskie, adding that Kygo (real name Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll) came to play pool in Aviator Nation’s Austin store, “So I think we’re just doing all their stuff now.” She also designed merchandise for the 2023 Phoenix Open golf tour and the Kentucky Derby. “It’s so random but I love horses and I just thought it would be fun,” she explains.
On her quest to enjoy life, the fashion designer also recently splashed out $20 million in cash to buy her ninth home, her second in Aspen, Colorado, where she said she is trying to spend half of the year she isn’t in Austin (she bought her $15 million Austin main residence last year to surf on the Colorado River). “I was in California for years and I’m kind of liking the small town thing now,” explains Mycoskie. “I get up early and I grind until like 4 o’clock and then I go on the lake in Austin. Or when I was in Aspen this winter, I would just go snowboarding… I really just believe that you have to have that balance. You can work your butt off but you have to have fun too.”
