The Hundreds is not just a t-shirt brand.

It is stories, content, culture, and community.

I stumbled upon The Hundreds at the perfect time in my life. I was into fashion and design but had nowhere to channel my curiosity - nothing had grabbed me until The Hundreds. I started to absorb absolutely everything I could about this new sub-culture called streetwear, which seemed to be a mixture of skate, hip-hop and sports cultures. This is when one of my brothers' friends showed me TheHundreds.com which at the time, the main feature was its blog written by the founder, Bobby.

This was essentially a visual diary of the brand's life. It took us inside and showed us what the ‘culture’ looked like all over the world. We were given insight to the long hours but also the fun parties. We learnt about artists that we never would have known about. This blog wasn’t just the brand's way to stay connected to its fans, it was the brand's way to put LA back on the map. LA at the time didn’t have a voice in street fashion. NY had Supreme, Alife, Staple Design and many more. LA was known for Von Dutch Hats & Juicy Couture. But this was changing thanks to The Hundreds and how they wanted the West Coast to rise up with them. This blog had a ridiculous impact on the culture, it was so big even Pharrell and Kanye were reading it.

Bobby often lifted the curtain to share his design process and it was this generosity that inspired budding designers like myself. Through this blog, they built a brand in public, which we hadn't really seen before. Fast forward some years and this budding designer (yours truly) is now a Brand Strateegist and Creative Director and my advice to anybody building a brand - be like Bobby Hundreds. Be transparent, be open, share your thoughts, admit your weaknesses, show vulnerability and let people emotionally connect with you and what you are building. You aren’t perfect but neither is your target audience.

The Hundreds clothing circa 2007, was very Starter snapbacks with the 90s sports script fonts, it was graphic skate t-shirts, sprinkled with an updated Stussy touch. It was fun but also thought out.

Was this the golden era of streetwear or was it the birth of streetwear?

This snippet from the This is Not a T-Shirt book, had me change my perspective on when it all started.

Some argue that streetwear as we know it today started here. Taking cues from Nike, Supreme, and Japanese lines that applied a luxury-goods philosophy to casual street clothes, we retooled and remastered streetwear. We honed the art of limited-edition distribution, produced collaborations that were low on profit and high on noise, and refined the science of branding… We may not sound alike, or even understand one another, but we all share a cool attitude that radiates from our respective cultures and a love of rare product and meticulous design. It’s that love that most readily defines what “streetwear” has become.

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The Hundreds won’t just sell you a t-shirt, they will sell you a perspective or a story that you can then wear as a sign. Every design means something and The Hundreds have always done an amazing job of storytelling. The primary rule of Bobby when designing t-shirts is to have something to say and I imagine this runs all the way through their design department. They begin with an opinion on an issue and then incorporate their signature attitude and personality into the design. Anytime you wear a design whether it is a political statement or a cartoon graphic, you are flying your personal brand's flag to say, this is who I am and what I believe in. And to those you saw wearing The Hundreds, especially in Australia at the time, there was always a mutual nod of respect, saying, you get it.

Yes, The Hundreds were at the right place at the right time in terms of social media and it being much easier to organically grow an audience back then. But if a young Bobby Hundreds was growing up with TikTok, I have no doubt that he would have had the same success. Their marketing tactics and creative thinking were incredible. Through their blog, we saw them get the most bang for the buck and a lot of it didn’t come down to ad spend but it came down to simply being creative.

What do you do when you can't afford to pay models?

You grab a tripod and use (most likely a bootleg version of) Adobe Photoshop to remove yourselves.

When they were starting to advertise the opening of the New York store, they started their own propaganda campaign to 'Keep The Hundreds out of New York'.

This blew up on Tumblr and WordPress and led to a very successful store opening in NYC.

You can read about it here on their blog.

Fast forward 10 or so years and The Hundreds is still around. They have had fans grow up with the brand but also a lot of fans leave it. Those who were once riders are no longer but there is a new breed of fans who find out about the Adam Bomb every year and The Hundreds lives on. Now, as an OG in streetwear, The Hundreds is an empire that has kept evolving and stayed true to its community - just look at what they are doing in the NFT space.

Sure they have had some lows but as a brand, they always kept their fans updated. After 19 years in the game, this quote from Bobby sums up exactly why they are still here and why I’d be betting big on them having a huge 20th anniversary year -  “Our mantra is 'People over Product' to remind us that without culture, The Hundreds is just a label.”

Thanks for reading.

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Links:

Read This is Not a T-Shirt by Bobby Hundreds.

It’s an incredibly real and open insight into what it takes to build a brand that has been around for 20 years. Even if you are not a fan of streetwear but are into brand/community building, read this.

This is Bobby's podcast.

Here is a trailer to his streetwear documentary, Built to Fail:

Here is a link to an archive of the blog.

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