She dropped out of Arizona State University one semester short of getting a journalism degree and moved to Hollywood, where she took a job at CBS helping with casting for Survivor, another of the network’s hit reality shows. “I’ll never forget walking out to the beach and seeing people rollerblading and biking and playing frisbee and volleyball and surfing, and I was like ‘Oh, my God, this is my dream,’ ” she recalls. The “all-American” brother-sister duo, as they were called, placed third, resulting in a Los Angeles press tour. It wasn’t until she was 22 that Mycoskie finally made her way to California after competing with Blake in the second season of The Amazing Race, a CBS adventure reality show that involves traveling around the world and competing in goofy challenges-finding a tree in Rio de Janeiro called “Fat Maria” or operating a cargo crane in Hong Kong-for a $1 million prize. Her mother, a former aerobics instructor, wrote health-forward cookbooks in the 1980s and early ’90s, her father was the team doctor for the Texas Rangers baseball franchise. That’s something I wish I’d done better at Toms.”ĭespite the conspicuous California accessorization, Myscoskie’s roots are in fact in Texas, where she grew up in the Dallas-adjacent city of Arlington, part of a family of athletes with a creative streak. But she just stays true to what feels right to her and her instincts. “Especially when your business has gotten as big as hers has gotten, everyone’s telling you, you need to hire these executives, you need to bring all these investors in. “Even though we started our businesses at the same time and even though we’re brother and sister, she’s really done this all on her own,” says Blake, who is now living in Costa Rica, taking a timeout from the “entrepreneur ring” to focus on his family. Its flagship store down the street from Paige’s on Venice Beach’s Abbot Kinney Boulevard shuttered in January, but the company is still in business. In 2019, creditors took over Toms, including Blake’s stake. Bain Capital paid Blake a reported $300 million for a 50% stake in 2014, but the novelty soon wore off, and efforts to diversify flopped. Its “One for One” donation model, in which Toms gave away a pair of shoes for each one it sold, made the company very successful very quickly. Her older brother, Blake, 45, started the pay-it-forward shoe company Toms in 2006, the same year she launched Aviator Nation (in a curious coincidence, they even came up with their business ideas on the same day Paige designed the Toms logo). 2002 CBS Photo ArchiveĮven as sales soar, Mycoskie is sticking with her business plan. The siblings placed third out of 11 teams. The few models featured on its website-predominantly white, lanky and very fit- boast her same low-key, athletic surfer style.įor her part, Mycoskie defends her prices as the product of high-quality fabrics, the complexity of the hand-stitched designs (most clothing companies use computer-generated graphics) and the premium of making everything in the U.S.īlake and Paige Mycoskie, then 25 and 22, trekked through New Zealand (pictured) and jumped off Brazil’s Sugarloaf Mountain while competing on the second season of The Amazing Race. “From the perspective of those individuals who can afford it, it allows them to nicely signal wealth, but also signal these other values like ‘I’m laid-back,’ ” she says. Alixandra Barasch, an associate professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, says the brand is succeeding partly because of the outlandish prices. Keeping production local has also enabled Aviator Nation to insulate itself almost entirely from the supply chain crisis that has roiled many competitors.īut at triple what it costs to buy a pair of Adidas sweatpants, Aviator Nation’s prices raise eyebrows. “I have hired assistant designers before. Every piece of Aviator Nation apparel is sketched by Mycoskie and handmade by people, not machines, who are paid a minimum of $17 an hour in the company’s Huntington Park factory (the signature six stripes are stitched on one by one).
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