When Paige Mycoskie attended a sports retail trade show in San Diego two years ago wearing T-shirts she had designed herself, she said she was taken aback when strangers kept asking where they could get the shirts. She decided that day to start her own line.
She got busy creating samples, sometimes sewing 18 to 19 hours a day. Deciding that she needed a catalog to present her line to retailers, Mycoskie, a photographer, shot it herself. But first, she had to find models.
“I really wanted a typical Southern California girl, so I drove up to Malibu, went to a coffee shop and found a girl who went to Pepperdine and asked her if she wanted to model for my line,” Mycoskie said.
Catalog in hand, she hit Fred Segal and Planet Blue two of the most trendy shops in Southern California.
“I’m extremely competitive and I said to myself, ‘These are the biggest places in Los Angeles. If I can’t get into those places, I’m not the next big thing,’ ” Mycoskie explained.
Her first sale to Fred Segal was an order for only $2,000. But after carrying her line for less than two weeks, the store placed a reorder for almost twice the amount of the first. Every retailer that picked up her Aviator Nation line placed reorders.
“Up until that point, I was dying T-shirts in a bucket by myself,” Mycoskie said. Since orders were coming in fast, she sought out local sewing houses and went with a small one in downtown Los Angeles to do most of the work.
At a trade show in February in Las Vegas, Mycoskie was approached by a Japanese company. “They wanted to distribute my line in Japan. They wanted to give me a showroom,” Mycoskie said.
So now she has a showroom in Japan and her line is sold in 40 retail locations in the United States.
“My real goal with this, from the beginning, has been to create a brand that will be around for a long time,” she said.
Gabriela Gonzalez
Paige Mycoskie
, 28, President and Founder, Aviator Nation, Venice Beach
Business: Clothing designer
Employees: 2
2007 revenues: $100,000
Fact: She got started with a $200 sewing machine and some instruction books on sewing
Quote: “I want people to be loyal to my line.”