Pacific Sunwear of California

It all started as a little surf shop in 1980 in Newport Beach, California. It wasn't called Pacific Sunwear then. It wasn't even all that different from all the other shops carrying surfboards and wax, except for one thing, the founders had a better idea. You see, during Southern California's wet, cool winters, the beaches get empty and the surf store business goes dry. Where does everyone go? To the mall of course. That was the idea: to be the first surf shop to move into California's popular mall locations. The first mall opening was in 1981 in Santa Monica Place. It was huge. Soon we opened seven more mall stores up and down the coast in places like Torrance, Thousand Oaks and West Los Angeles. By 1987 we had grown to 21 stores. But PacSun wasn't the only good idea born at the beach in the early '80s. All over Orange County, California, locals were creating their own brands of clothing with names like Gotcha, CatchIt and Quiksilver. How does PacSun succeed when thousands of other clothing companies fail? We listen; and we change. Someone once said to the CEO of PacSun, "You give too much credit to those kids." But everyone at PacSun knows the kids have the answers. We listen to get the trends, the solutions and find out what we're doing right. The rest, of course, is history.