Last year Paire co-founders and best friends Nathan Yun and Rex Zhang seized the opportunity to showcase the biggest selling points of their products on national television — by asking a multi-millionaire on Shark Tank Australia to smell their socks.
For both Yun and Zhang, the Shark Tank episode where Zhang pulled off the sock he had been wearing for five days and asked shark and Vita Group founder Maxine Horne to give it a sniff remains the most effective marketing move the brand has made to date when it comes to showing off its products.
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In fact, after the episode aired, Paire’s sales didn’t stop for three days.
Then, 2024 got even better for the Melbourne-founded apparel brand, which was launched in 2020, with Paire taking home both the Rising Star Award and the Retail Award in SmartCompany’s 2024 Smart50 Awards.
Paire also made it to 13th place on the Smart50 list — a significant leap up from its 38th position on the list in 2023.
Winning the awards, being ranked in Smart50 twice, and the resulting exposure opened the doors for Paire, with the founders confirming they received interview and podcast opportunities, and business partnership opportunities afterwards as a result.
More than just another e-commerce brand
When it comes to marketing, Paire wants to be out of the box, says Yun.
“We never wanted to look like just another e-commerce brand. We wanted to stand out. So a lot of our marketing campaigns are very intentional,” he told SmartCompany.
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“It (Shark Tank) was such a great experience for us. We thought that was a great marketing stunt, as well as it was also PR coverage, and it was a great experience going onto Shark Tank asking for investment as well.”
While Paire kicked off its product range in 2020 with socks made with Supreme CoolBlend – a Merino wool and cotton blend – the brand has since added underwear, bras, tops, leggings, activewear and loungewear to its product portfolio.
Paire made $1.7 million in the 2022 financial year and $10 million in the 2025 financial year.
As of July 2025, the brand has a total of 16 full-time employees and 10 casual and part-time employees.
The story behind Paire’s products
As a small brand that is only four years old, Yun says Paire is still trying to get its name out there.
“But in the current society, we are in a sea of new brands. We live in a time where hundreds of new brands are created every year,” he says.
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“For Paire, we wanted to show how different we are. We are not a brand that just finds a product off the shelf, creates a website overnight and then launches into the market. We spend so much time and effort in our R&D, in our fabrics. We wanted to tell that story as well.”
Yun believes Paire has more stories to tell as a brand compared to many other small businesses or new starters.
“So we wanted to use marketing as our tool to tell those stories and to really let our customers understand us. That’s why we work a lot on marketing,” he says.
However, Yun says Paire doesn’t think of it in a traditional marketing sense.
We think of it as more of a brand storytelling sense. It’s a story about our products. It’s a story of our values. It’s a story of what we do, our ethics, our morals, our quality and our community.
“I think it’s a story of all of that, and all of that combines into what people might see as marketing, but we just simply want to tell the story of the products,” he says.
The power of pop-up to permanent stores
Since the Smart50 Awards in 2024, Paire has turned pop-up stores into permanent stores, opening its first flagship bricks-and-mortar store in QV Melbourne and one in South Melbourne, which has bolstered the company’s revenue and profitability.
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Paire’s goal for the first pop-up store was to test if three years of its online success could be duplicated offline.
“We really wanted to learn how it works and whether it’s possible to give customers that offline experience,” he says.
Paire is now looking at opening more stores in the next 12 to 18 months, including more in Melbourne and two or three in Sydney.
Zhang says offline expansion is very important to the brand.
“We are acquiring a different group of customers who don’t really shop online or prefer the offline experience. So a pop-up store or physical store is providing a physical experience for our audience,” he says.
“As a fabric technology company, it is crucial for our customers to experience our fabric and feel. With only an online presence, it is very hard to achieve.”
With more and more physical stores, Paire is able to get the customer inside the store to touch and feel the products – and that makes it “much easier to convert them”, says Zhang.
“Another thing is the store is not only presenting a product, but completing a full experience of what Paire is. So what the vibe is, what the brand wants to deliver, and the message,” he adds.
Entries for the 2025 Smart50 Awards are now open. If your business has had a big year, now is the time to tell us.
