Bobby Hundreds: 80′s Icons to the Present | Hypebeast

Do you think your ability to communicate will pay dividends in the future in terms of the growth for The Hundreds? How important is international growth for you relative to maintaining or growing domestically?

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this question! But.. I’ll just flip it into a question I can answer.

Communication is key in The Hundreds’ DNA.  I can proudly say that as far as daily blog communication and interactivity between brand and customer, we’ve had that covered since day one.  It was always important for us to maintain that relationship with our customers, to provide them with the insight behind our product, and the people behind it. It trickled down from growing up in a punk DIY community that emphasized equivalence and breakdown of social hierarchy. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine building a brand without that platform, but it has always been in our ethos.

International growth is vastly important to maintaining relevance and brand awareness.  Globalization has evolved from economic theory to hard reality. Borders, literally and figuratively, are being broken worldwide, and we’d be ignorant if we didn’t embrace all the opportunities this opens up.  There was a time when the world revolved around American culture and trends.  But that time is not now!

Sort of tying into the whole notion of globalization, how do you view those who are slow to adopt the latest in Internet brand presence, do you feel it’s a big detriment to development? Do you genuinely find new social media platforms beneficial like Twitter and the like? 

It depends!  For the majority of brands and businesses out there, you’re in the dinosaur ages if you haven’t dedicated a significant amount of attention towards your internet presence.  BUT it’s certainly not for everyone.  With some brands, any proactive internet exposure goes against the very fabric of their ideology.  Yet, they still make the mistake of sparking up a blog or Twitter profile because they assume it’s what they’re supposed to do, although the forced nature is detrimental to their overall branding development.  Follow the natural course of your brand.  

For us, the open platform has always made sense, because it’s the core of our branding strategy.  The very notion of The Hundreds was to be on the same level as our customers, and be as open as possible about our process and day-to-day.  Logically, the blog and eventual online interaction plugged into that equation.  So yes, our customer is looking for a The Hundreds Twitter page, and for Ben and I to be a finger-click away.  And ultimately, it enhances their overall understanding of our brand, and reinforces our DNA. 

I’ve had my Twitter account open for a couple years now, and tried to shut it down a few months ago. It’s such a gross exercise in narcissism, I didn’t see any benefit to my personal life.  But when I looked at our webstats, I realized that the vast amount of traffic to our site now comes via our Twitter accounts.  So now I update mine regularly with bad jokes and quips (anything to NOT talk about my personal life or product news), although it’s more for business purposes.