PacSun · eCommerce
PacSun Kids Launch
Building PacSun’s eCommerce experience for a genuinely younger customer, with enough navigation and merchandising structure for a new Kids category whose eventual size was still unknown.
- Owned
- By first-person testimony given August 20, 2026, materially drove most of the eCommerce strategy, digital strategy, site experience, navigation and category presentation, digital launch execution, and ongoing digital operation.
- Boundary
- This does not make him the sole owner of the category or the company-wide Kids business.
2021 preparation · June 2021 dedicated launch · July–September operation reviewed October 2021
Chronicle
Before launch — Designing for a younger PacSun customer
We were building a dedicated Kids business on PacSun.com for a wearer meaningfully younger than PacSun’s established customer—roughly ages 4–11/12, as I remember it. The parent was generally still the purchaser. The proposition was younger versions of PacSun style for younger brothers, sisters, and other younger members of households already familiar with PacSun.
The proposition was broadly non-gendered and unisex, with boys and girls represented and refinements to help people find what they wanted. It needed to read as one PacSun Kids experience rather than a set of disconnected departments.
The hard design question was how visible Kids should become inside PacSun. We knew it needed more than a product shelf, but we did not yet know how large the business would become. Every choice about navigation, homepage prominence, and the category tree gave the new business more structural weight. Before launch, we designed toward a Kids homepage and new navigation and category structure, with supporting work in search, sizing, recommendations, audience logic, and product feeds.
May–June 2021 — From FOG Kids test to dedicated launch
FOG Kids launched on May 14 as a precursor and test-and-learn moment within the broader program. It gave the team an early Kids expression and a way to begin learning; it was not the whole PacSun Kids launch.
The broader dedicated Kids launch followed in June 2021.
What went live was more than another set of products. PacSun was establishing a dedicated Kids assortment, category destination, marketed proposition, and digital operating program inside the business it already had.
Summer 2021 — Operating the category
By the first-season review, customers were moving through a top-level Kids landing page, a PacSun Kids Brand Shop, PLPs and PDPs, subcategories and trend shops, and category and refinement states. Product linking was still being improved. This was the operating experience that had emerged from the broader architecture we designed toward before launch.
My responsibility was to make that experience coherent and keep it running. I materially drove most of the eCommerce and digital strategy, site experience, navigation and category presentation, digital launch execution, and ongoing digital operation. Buying owned the assortment, Marketing owned go-to-market, and Creative owned the creative and assets. My part was making the category work digitally, not owning PacSun Kids as a whole.
Kids brought new requirements into processes PacSun already used for Men’s and Women’s. Digitally, that meant adapting taxonomy and search, sizing and photography, audience logic, reporting, and forecasts. I also remember the work reaching fulfillment, returns, customer service, and vendor onboarding. We were extending PacSun’s retail machinery for a new customer and category, not assembling a separate operating stack.
October 2021 — What the first season showed
The October review looked back on a live program operating through July, August, and September. Customers were using the Kids landing, Brand Shop, product and category pages, search, marketing, and CRM surfaces. The qualitative signals were positive, and there were still clear opportunities to improve the experience.
By then, the category had made it through its first season as a live business the team was still operating and optimizing.
Looking back from 2026, I remember Kids performing well, expanding, and becoming a durable part of PacSun. What stays with me is the work of giving a new customer enough room inside an established digital business before we could know how much room the category would ultimately need.