Bobby Hundreds Talks NFT Book, 20th Anniversary: ​​Details – WWD

According to Bobby Kim, better known as Bobby Hundreds, streetwear has “died a grizzly death” several times in the 20 years since he founded the brand The Hundreds.

“Streetwear is constantly dying and being reborn,” he said during a Zoom call, reflecting on the brand’s 20th anniversary. “It’s taken on many different lives and iterations. I like to say that the streetwear generation is about regeneration, and that’s what’s always compelled me to it. It’s constant, forever challenging and questioning itself.”

Hundreds launched his label from Los Angeles in 2003 at a time when streetwear was still considered a subculture. He stated that much of streetwear was divided into skate fashion and urban culture, which he explained was code for “white clothes and black clothes” respectively. He chose to start his own brand for people like himself who didn’t fit into any of the demographics but were interested in subcultures.

Since the brand’s inception, Hundreds has made it their brand’s mission to democratize streetwear and build a community. He has done this by being an early adopter of new platforms and technologies to build a following.

When the brand was founded, Hundreds had already been blogging for several years, using the platform to share their punk rock zine. He continued to use his blog to talk about The Hundreds in a time before social media was mainstream and many of today’s platforms had even launched.

“In the beginning, the only difference with us was that we were vocal,” he explained. “We were quite transparent and I think that was disturbing. It was also somewhat offensive to much of the subculture which had been very closed, secretive and intentionally secretive. And here we were, a couple of kids walking in and saying, ‘This world has been very exclusive and the intention has been to keep people out.’ You had to earn it. We were just such fans of everything we discovered and learned that we wanted to share it.”

Hundreds continues this approach and affinity for new technologies to this day, with the streetwear brand being an early adopter of NFTs and Web3, which are the subjects of his upcoming book, “NFTs Are a Scam / NFTs Are the Future,” which is will be released on Tuesday.

The co-founder explained that his affinity for new technologies is not a marketing ploy or following trends, but comes from his natural curiosity about new platforms and ways to connect with people.

Adopting NFTs in his business was another way for him to connect with his community, giving customers a way to own a part of the brand.

“There’s always been a strange dynamic where companies go out and push their products to young people who use their hard-earned savings to support these giant companies,” he explained. “Out of the stock market, they get some influence, maybe some social value, but in terms of any type of real ownership or any kind of financial success or growth, they don’t see that. Meanwhile, the companies do. These brands and businesses seem to just get bigger and consumers stay in the same place.”

Hundred explained that he hopes the takeaway from his book is that people learn to be more open to learning about these technologies, rather than having a fixed stance for or against them without fully understanding the media.

“The reality is we don’t know about NFTs yet,” he said. “It’s only been three to four years. It’s kind of like three to four years into the internet if you thought, ‘What is this?’ Like you would never have predicted social media, eBay or Amazon. You couldn’t have understood that I send letters back and forth with my friend. I can do it by physical mail — I don’t need the Internet to do this. And so [the internet] transformed communications and transformed global systems.”

For the next 20 years of the brand, Hundreds could not predict where the brand will be given the many industries he operates in, but he is committed to continuing his focus on community building.

“I don’t like to put myself in a box or go into ‘this is who I’m going to be,'” he said. “I tell people all the time that I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Like I never would have imagined I would be so deep in technology three years ago. Tech and finance are two spaces that I was outside and excluded from. They were two languages ​​I was allergic to. Now they are in my daily conversations.”