Almost a year ago, Kevin and I convened with Andy Chiu of adidas, in a busy Starbucks coffee shop in Hong Kong’s Central district. An informal talk began revolving around a project you’ve most likely heard inklings about in the last few weeks, regarding Hypebeast’s very first foray into world of collaboration footwear. Under the neat little title of “The Complete Ride”, it was sort of a dream come true amongst the whole team, to take a stab at putting together the pieces of the puzzle to form the final product for the new incoming bike-inspired Zeitfrei model. Developing some great relationships whilst strengthening other ones, the road hasn’t been all picturesque along the way. We’ve gained an enormous amount of experience through this project and made enough mistakes to last a few experiences (see: timelines). But ask anybody who’s been in our shoes and had the opportunity to put their mark in footwear history, and I’m sure they’d say they would do it all over again… actually maybe ask Hikmet.

There has been an ironic reversal of the roles in the last few weeks. Communicating with fellow media partners regarding communications, creating press releases and giving interviews as opposed to administering them has been a fun process nevertheless. The support has been outstanding from our peers and for that we thank them immensely. While many question Hypebeast’s involvement on this project, as we’re not exactly a bike-centric participant, we took this as an opportunity to help enhance and drive a sport we have a deep underlying respect for. A penchant for creating quality product was at the forefront of our efforts and hopefully many of you will feel the same. Hypebeast branding is a bit of a catch 22, I’m sure there are more than a handful of people that frequent the site consistently but would scoff at the notion of being labeled a Hypebeast. We’re really not sure how (un)favorably the retail reaction will be to something with our logo on it. Will people be weary of being labeled a Hypebeast by rocking the shoe even if they’re actually feeling them? Oh well, judgment day is on Friday, May 29th!

To give you a better understanding of the project, we’ve compiled an interview that involves three integral personalities within the adidas “The Complete Ride” project. They include Special Projects Manager, Jason Chow of Hypebeast, Solebox founder Hikmet Sugoer and adidas Sport Performance Footwear Product Manager, Andy Chiu.