Jockey’s president and COO on the brand’s enduring legacy

If any brand can claim credit for shaping the underwear category, it’s Jockey.

Best known for inventing the modern men’s brief and helping turn undergarments from purely functional basics into a mass consumer category, the Wisconsin-based company is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

Today, Jockey operates in more than 140 countries, including India, Australia, New Zealand, and the US, and has grown into one of the most recognizable names in innerwear.

In 2025, for example, Page Industries, the company that licenses Jockey products in India—one of Jockey’s largest international markets—reported stronger-than-expected Q3 profits of $23.4 million.

Throughout its history, however, one thing has remained constant: The company has stayed fully family-owned, with underwear still representing a major share of the business, Mark Fedyk, president and COO of Jockey International, told Retail Brew.

In a recent conversation with Retail Brew, Fedyk discussed the brand’s evolution, its long-standing values, and why it continues to resonate with consumers.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How has the brand evolved over the past 150 years?

The values around quality, the values around operating with integrity, the values around people, the values around innovation—those have really not changed.

When you’re a family-owned company—as ours is—foundationally we are really focused on the impact of the brand, not just the financial performance and the financial return of the brand. That’s a big difference. The other thing that is so significantly different is we’re focused on building a multigenerational business. We want a business or brand that’s going to be around for the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren of our owner. We want that brand to be around for the next generations of our communities and our partners. Those are a big part of it in terms of values that we really honor and try to stick to.

How has Jockey remained family-owned despite many economical and geopolitical challenges?

We have survived, and we have prospered during all of that uncertainty and during all of that volatility. We’ve seen it all from world wars to pandemics to whatever, and we have prospered through that because we are family-owned and because we take a long-term generational approach to decision making. We’re not forced by investors or shareholders to pursue short-term growth or gains. We’re not forced to chase what I would call unhealthy growth or unhealthy partnerships.

How do you stay relevant to younger consumers?

We’re at a time when younger generations of consumers are looking for organizations, institutions, [and] brands that they can trust. For us, we’ve been building that trust up for 150 years. We’re not chasing relevance. What we’re doing is we’re just trying to tell our story of relevance that we’ve had for 150 years. We’re just trying to tell it to a new and broader audience. An expanded audience is probably the best way to say it right now. So you might have to change things like where we tell that story differently. In the old days, it was probably a billboard in Times Square. Right now, it’s social media, TikTok.

How important are physical stores to your business?

It’s a growing part of the business.

We’re constantly evaluating the portfolio of stores in terms of where they’re located, what’s their profitability, but also what I would call the concept. What we are seeing and what we are doing is continuing to expand the experience of that store. For a brand that’s been around 150 years, it’s really very authentic. We have a lot of stories to tell. We have a lot of history to tell. The stores that we’re building now, and we call them flagship stores…those stores are really about presenting the breadth of our product assortment: a high-touch, high-service, highly educated, highly engaged set of associates that can speak to the story of the brand, its history, its quality, its innovation, and build trust with the consumers. We want people to stay as long as they want. They can hang out, listen to some country music with us, or grab a cup of coffee.