How Bobby Hundreds Turned A T-shirt Into A Streetwear Empire | Blueprint

designer writer photographer and director Bobby hundreds channeled his love of music and culture into an iconic streetwear brand the hundreds this is his blueprint your parents are both immigrants from Korea how did their experience inform sort of your personal ambition they both are passionate about the arts and creativity but never considered it a real opportunity as far as like a career or a future they could tell from a very early age that all I cared about was drawing art and design even and clothing and cool culture they were always very adamant that there was no future for me in that and then I just had to work really hard in terms of finding a more professional stable career but also yes their work ethic I think how they managed to carve a living and a space for themselves in America I think is very honorable and have always admired and appreciated that in high school you start taking photos and really exploring your creative side why photography one of my best friends Zack Gordon er who is a noted professional photographer now he was already taking a lot of photos of us skating I thought that was interesting because I was never that good of a skater still not I I did appreciate the community and the culture and the ecosystem around it that to me was just as interesting as the actual activity of skate and so I brought my camera along I started shooting live concerts punk shows that we were going to at the time and then writing as well you know so I just started writing a lot at this point are you cognizant of the street where movement street were in itself right wasn't even really called Street where back then there were just independent t-shirt labels there was more skate specific brands there was a lot of cartoon driven graphics and me being an art guy I was really heavily invested in the graffiti are and the character art and so that stuff started popping up more and more on like skate t-shirts and skate brands like it just made me fall in love with skateboarding even more because I was like that's the kind of art that I like my girlfriend at the time who's now my wife lived in Japan and she was teaching English so I just moved to Japan and as that was happening I was falling more and more in love with with Japan was doing with street work especially what nigo was doing with faith and I was always up in that shot no one back home understood you know like I'm going to Japan and like loading up on Stussy and in the States at the time it's likes to see nice to where that when I was like in high school like who wears species still I love street culture and what with Japan was doing I love what New York was doing I loved these artists right that was another thing I feel fancy myself as an artist even though I'm not and it never really was but I looked up to guys like Futura cause Barry McGee Margaret Kilgallen these guys to me were like those were my superheroes being in Japan not really having a plan to six months later being in law school or even a turbulent love free life life is hard I'm not built for it what I need is a stable job if I have a stable nine-to-five job where I'm making money maybe five til two in the morning I can work on art and design and just do it for fun my parents will never make money off an art my teachers told me I'll never make money off my creative work so if I can't make money there let me make my money elsewhere and that'll support me having fun over here so then I applied the law school I can make my parents happy right I can make money in that first year I think I had a lot of reflection and I just like a lot of crises almost because I was like this is everything I wanted I got into a good school I'm actually doing really well but I'm like no I just want to do our the summer after my first year I worked for an attorney who was the most reputable research attorney in LA at the time his name was Abe Edelman through the legend and he was dying of cancer that summer when I met him he was pretty much on his last throes in the courthouse we get through three months of an internship together last month he kind of not around as much because his health is deteriorating he shows up on the last day of the internship and he's like hey look you did great you're one of the best interns I've ever had you're going to do great here you're going to have all the cars all the women I'm like sick sign me up any Sydney's like but you should never do this do I suck like what he's like no like you're great but your heart's not in it and he's like look at me I'm 40 years old and I'm gonna die what do we talk about every day we're like what makes you light up it's like he's like it's that lunch time that 45 minute lunch that we had together and what do we talk about you talk about his 100 he's an income we have a free moment here like a paid Ghetts what happened today you know I made I do this graphic what do you think and he's like do you want to be 40 years old and realized he spent the entirety of your life doing something he never really cared about [Music] that really woke me up and a few months later he actually passed away but that was the turning point that day I put my everything into the hundreds from that point forward we didn't even have a t-shirt at that point it was just all in my black book by the end of the summer we started printing t-shirts I built the website put it up the summer of 2003 was one weed again bobby had an idea but now the challenge was taking the hundreds from a concept to a final cut [Music] we do a lot of artist collaborations like we've always when we do them we ask that we get the original art from the artist if possible so this is just some of our gallery of archives over the years and this wall is an Aron Chi mural of I think 40 distinct wave he painted over four days here and I love it because he just this white part is the actual wall and you can see that he just drew like pencil arcs and then built off of there and I asked that he keep the lines aired to show the process of right really when it boils down to it like anyone can draw a pencil line when did you go over the name I was working through a law journal and in the middle of a paragraph I saw those words together the hundreds and I love the typography of it and then it started to me referring to community and people and that's like what's always been my passion it's not about clothes like I don't really I'm not a fashion guy like I don't care about clothes I care about drawing people together and like bringing cultures and communities together so I was like the hundreds like strength in numbers prior to that internship so you're in law school and you meet your partner bang yeah if I got anything out of law school it's that I met then I see this guy and he's in my class and I'm like oh he's got black fours on that's one of my favorite shoes and I was wearing these customized Louis Vuitton Air Force Ones and so he comes up to me after class and we're just like you like shoes I like shoes we should be friends it was that exact conversation so at this point you now have your partner but it doesn't seem like you have an idea of exactly what the business is going to be no for Ben it was look we can make money some clothes like you want to put your art on t-shirts all sell t-shirts the first thing we did was let's start figuring out what are the top stores that we want to sell to Fred Segal in Santa Monica had a street department so we walk into Fred Segal the guys never heard of us we don't even have San people we have photocopies of hand drawings I've done a t-shirt we don't even know what a buyer is but can we talk to the manager of the store I'm the manager okay cool hi I'm Bobby this is Ben we're from the hundred and he's like never heard of you guys and we're like how could you've never heard of us I thought this was Fred Segal I thought you were the coolest store in LA I'm just like yeah we are and like we've never heard of the hundred a show long sheet like you get where your samples at like you have teach me we're like not like you this is how you order it we're like in the back of our heads were like oh like why don't we have samples we don't know what we're doing he's like I'll take this this myth on consignment we take the money with printed shirts we come back drop them off and start calling up our friends okay come down to Fred Segal we'll give you cash just going there and start buying our stuff and so two weeks later we just casually end up strolling through your shop and we're like hey what's up man he looks like oh guys what's going on we're like a other stuff going it's like yeah it's crazy it's going out and I can't keep on a shelf because I can you can you get me more or like yeah yeah he's like I can't believe it were like yeah we told you then we go to the next shop hey we're looking for the buyer now we know what ask for what hey man Bobby and been weird the hundreds never heard of it oh really because you should call up your boy over at Fred Segal within a week we're in five of the best stores in LA and we're just running this ring when we would go into these shops and pitch our brand and they would say something like what makes you guys different there's a thousand of these t-shirt friends every day that walk in here and I'm like there are just a million of those t-shirt friends we're not a t-shirt brand this isn't t-shirts this is stories this is content and culture and community this is relationships the t-shirt is just merch [Music] how long into the hundreds until the design for atom bomb King okay so we didn't have a logo the first three years of the brand three yeah there was no logo people didn't buy the hundreds for the hundreds because no one knew what it was people were buying to the hundreds for the designs I went back to the roots of like what we were all about 1990s 1980s Saturday morning cartoons Acme Looney Tunes Warner Brothers the cartoon bomb that the Road Runner and wile coyote would run around with if you notice the bomb never explodes it's just always under the surface of blowing up and I'm like that's how we should run our brand always like we should always be right about to get there like oh it's about to hit but it's like not let's never actually like blow out and disappear and then one day Ben was like why don't you make a character version of the bomb and from there we started putting my shirts didn't work for years and one one season we put in we made them look like a basketball and this is the weirdest thing with street wear anytime you put a basketball on anything it'll sell and then everyone wanted the bomb they were like oh we see that everywhere but once it went back to reverting to an atom bomb then we couldn't stop it to this day this is a photo of our first office and that's been working right there and all our inventory and that eventually ended up being our store today on rosewood and for a fact we'll head down to the warehouse from here so you know at this point the street wear scene was incredibly sort of exclusive what you guys were building with the hundreds was a completely different kind of thing can you talk about that so we went from existing this very exclusive space to let's create an inclusive brand right when we decided to build our first flagship store in LA I was like let's respond to the typical expected street where retail experience which is cold gray concrete that'd be warm let's use wood let's pop off in the dressing room with like a neon red let's have like a lot of staff working them have a staff be like a clubhouse let's encourage a community and behavior in a way where everyone is just supportive here there's also the other side of that when you have to let people go you know what was that like the first time that you had to fire someone the worst part of my job is having to let people go and the second worst part is when people quit or leave it's hard for me to not take it personally I used to take it really personally because again when we started this brand like it was such a clubhouse really we're hiring friends right and there came a point where it went from clubhouse to more or less corporate and we had responsibilities all of a sudden and a lot of our friends that had helped us up until that point were like they just wanted to keep a clubhouse and I did too like in my heart but we couldn't and so those were probably the first rounds of people that either left or we had to let go because we're like look like you're not keeping up and that was hard so what moment did the hundreds feel real to you jay-z came out of retirement in the mid-2000s and it was the hangar tour he did like seven shows in 24 hours and he wore us and all the stops and we didn't give it to him like we don't even know how he got this stuff and we had this all-over print safety-pin hooded sweatshirt that actually honestly did not sell very well and we were near the end of that season and it was front page USA Today MTV MTV com like everywhere that photo it just like if Florida's and for Ben and I I remember Ben call means is like go to this website go to this website we're jumping up and down and then the next day we're like oh did we fell anymore now like that's never done anything for us yeah this is where all the product comes in and ships out from here this is basically like ground zero for all our product and it's like always impressive for people they come in they're like well this is sake there's so much stuff and for me when I look at it just like not the problems on my the more of this stuff is here it's more of a headache that I'm trying to get rid of the 100 surge but scaling the business and managing a team presented a new set of problems was there you know ever a moment where you guys had to have a conversation about making payroll for the next week or did this thing could be over yeah oh like constantly to that I mean to this day there are months consecutive months where Ben and I will just eat a check and just to make sure that one of our employees gets paid on time or a vendor gets paid I have enough money you know I don't have a lot of money but I have enough money I have a house that's decent I have a car and that's it in this business you really can be taken out in a season you can make a couple wrong moves you can over order a store can cut you off you can just be considered uncool for whatever reason with the wrong alignment we can wake up from this dream at any time none of this was promised or guaranteed to us everything is just I'm very grateful for like oh like that's that t-shirt sold or that collaboration did well like amazing I didn't do well oh that sucks just live and learn like but nothing's guaranteed so I'm just grateful every day that we get to be here have you been ever considered taking on investment or selling the business outright every year someone else comes around and knocking on our door probably most notably Tommy Hilfiger we were meeting with Tommy a lot over the course of the year year and a half what it comes down to you at the end of it all is we are so emotionally tied to this brand I just can't put a price tag on any of it it's invaluable anything that's printable that comes from the hundreds is printed here t-shirts and fleas we also do printing for a bunch of other brands that we compete with in our space and we've done that for years it's because they know that we're artists and we care about printing and running a clean shop and so other brands trust us to take care of their product the same way you know when you started the brand you were pretty squarely in the DEM that you were targeting 23 you're single guy you're now in your late 30s you have several children wife house out you know in the burbs how is your relationship with the brand and the audience changed yeah it's a really good question that I had a lot of trouble with I think when I rounded thirty years old I think that in my head I was having trouble reconciling the fact that I'm not in my low 20s anymore I don't understand this music I don't get to Drake me I'm like I just don't get like what's happening and meanwhile my customer is getting younger although my cut some of my customers aging up with me a lot of them are graduating and now there's like every day another 13 year old kid is finding out about the hundreds for the first time just like every day there's a new eighth grader who finds out about us every day there's a senior in high score senior in college who's graduating this is like the hundreds is back now you had someone who's so committed and loved it and then just like almost hates it it hurts because you know that's my art and my brand and I put so much of myself into it but at the same time it's like I can't acknowledge that people have pasted that change and transform over time and like I'm the same way I had to kind of get over that I think a lot of that was me not ready to accept that I'm just getting older and like thinking of it in a negative sense what I think what I was forgetting was that I have built this legacy right and that's something that no young brand can have no young designer can have is history a timeline a legacy stories and now like a lot of these younger kids that are coming into our elide you're the you're an OG which like is crazy for me to hear because I'm like nomina the oh jeez are like the aircrew Nettie is soft and strong juicy and clots or fresh drive on like bouncers oh jeez needles and oh geez like well for our generation you're an OG and I'm like and it's pretty tight you know like owning that age aspect of it of like I'm actually only getting better I'm actually just filling up my story with more and more chapters in my head it's weird it's like I'm still 23 and I still think like that it's like that's all I need just let me hang around just let me stay in the party let me draw another t-shirt let me make some more clothes let me write another blog take a photo like let's just let me stay here as long as I can and as long as I can pay my rent [Music]

Channel: Complex

Views: 2,086,156

Keywords: complex, complex originals, sneakers, magazine, news, entertainment, current affairs, men, man, young man, culture, cool, edgy, funny, complex tv, complex media, bobby hundreds, Noah Callahan-Bever, Blueprint, The Hundreds, Illustrator, Writer, Photographer, Designer, Streetwear, Fashion, Art, Atom Bomb, Sports, Basketball Motivation, Complex, Complex Music

Id: 2amjd1f6Yvo

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ariLeCut]

this was a really dope watch. The hundreds was one of the first street brands I went too.

[u/BradyGareth]

I don't care what anyone says, I will always fuck with the hundreds. The Jackson Pollock collection was dope as hell

[u/-_-neohugh]

Such a good video. Really interesting how someone's insistence of being true to his own style and not changing his brand is leading to the brand slowly becoming less popular. This was a great brand but sadly can't compete anymore with the current dominant brands.

[u/enderman96]

Watched this, I haven't been into The Hundreds in years but listening to him brought some of my internet back just because it's nice to know where his inspiration came, and comes, from. Very very cool mini doc.