Ben and I sat and stared off into the distance, trying to ignore our neighbors’ feigned busyness. We had two substantive conversations with store buyers that week and zero sales to show for it. The Hundreds stuck out like a sore thumb in that space. Although most exhibitors were start-ups, they had a faint idea as to the process of making and selling clothing. Buyers passed our starved rack of bright crispy tees with cartoony graphics for more established brands using ring-spun shirts and water-based applications. At the time, pure New York– and Japan-inspired streetwear like ours was an alien idea, so most designers were emulating potato-sack, backpack hip-hop attire like LRG or line-drawing illustrations on extra-medium hipster tees. Ben and I silently judged the grown men in Kangol hats and double-collared Polos. It only solidified that we weren’t like anyone else in the industry. They were focused on selling clothing. We were more interested in telling a story, broadcasting a lifestyle, and participating in a culture. Our T-shirts were distinct—a few pointed parodies, bold graphics on starchy, open-end cotton shirts—but they weren’t the main attraction. We were. And in the long run, we were right. Of the forty vendors showing at that year’s Agenda, The Hundreds is one of the few brands that survived.3
Agenda was a warm-up for the main event, MAGIC, which was peaking along with the urban market in the mid-2000s. Brands like Phat Farm were erecting $2 million booths and doing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales every year. MAGIC was a larger-than-life spectacle. The aisles were clogged with mixtape artists, skate rug rats who’d snuck into the arena to snatch free stickers, and bloodsucking garmentos champing at the bit for a slice of that hip-hop pie. The year we hopped on board, the Vegas show curated a small section for indie brands like ours called the High 5 Campground. Again, our version of streetwear wasn’t a visible component in the larger urban context, so we were lost in an abyss of halfhearted garage T-shirt labels. We sat alongside a girl selling brown shirts emblazoned with Biggie lyrics and Che Guevara stencils and a couple of white dudes with fauxhawks customizing trucker caps.4
We looked pretty pathetic, sandwiched between a music merch table and a couple from Nebraska who had found a modicum of success writing funny sayings on tees—the kind of novelty company you find advertised in the sidebar of a clickbait site. Meanwhile, our entire section was obscured in the shadow of supersized booths like Lot 29 and Southpole. The licensed Looney Tunes artwork on their walls loomed over us like Thanksgiving Day floats. Between spinning on our thumbs and trash-talking the kooks around us, Ben and I would amble down the halls of the convention center, peeking into these prefab forts. Pretty models in gold heels beckoned buyers and scheduled appointments at the door. Men in do-rags and denim shorts caroused in the lounge, sifting through swag bags of flyers and tchotchkes. Gray-haired downtown Jews in flashy suits were compartmentalized in rooms, waving track jackets in the air and selling like street preachers. Seated like students in a schoolroom, the buyers feverishly took notes, whispered to each other, smiled, frowned, and fantasized about a gangbusters Christmas season. Track jackets were the new snake oil.
It felt like Agenda all over again, except this time we were trying to stand out among thousands of competitors, corporate behemoths, and American Apparel models strutting the grounds in cotton underwear. There was so much noise, so much T&A under that roof, that The Hundreds was swallowed up in the pandemonium. We were on our feet for ten hours straight, shouting over Twista and Paul Wall lyrics from the overhead speakers, forcing stickers and flyers onto anyone who made eye contact. We chased bottom-feeding stores around the corner, asking them if they’d like to browse our line. Nobody bit. “I’m sorry, man,” the buyer of a popular Portland-based boutique told me, “but no one’s heard of your company before.”5 As much as I wanted to clothesline him, as painful as it was to hear it, he was right. Why would you buy The Hundreds with no cachet, following, or cosign? Shops have limited shelf space, and every name they stock is an endorsement. Their credibility and brand value are on the line, not to mention their revenue. Maybe I wouldn’t have bought me either.
So, Ben and I devised a plan. Like any situation where we have the lower hand, we reframed the circumstances to reverse the power. In our minds, true streetwear meant “limited edition” and “exclusivity,” not peddling our art to the masses.6 Streetwear seethed with attitude and particularity. We knew our T-shirts were the smartest, our brand was the coolest, so why give it away? Stores should be honored to buy The Hundreds gear from us. It was a privilege to even see our offerings. (Right? Right.)
That night, self-deception recharged, confidence renewed, we left the convention center and bought a black plastic tarp at the local Kmart. The next morning, we draped it over our rack, hiding our samples. For 99 percent of the buyers at the show, The Hundreds was now closed for public viewing. While our peers groveled and hounded shop owners, we kicked our Dunks back and yawned. Occasionally, the tarp drew the curiosity of an onlooker, who asked what was lurking underneath. We’d consider their badge, give them the once-over, and tell them we weren’t conducting business that day. It didn’t matter if they were shopping on behalf of Macy’s or Up Against the Wall. If their store wasn’t on our list of authentic streetwear boutiques from around the world (there were only maybe fifty of them, maybe three of which would even attend a show like MAGIC), then they couldn’t see the line. We weren’t even interested in a business card.
It was no surprise that this scheme bummed store buyers out.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” they’d shout.
Many vowed to never return. But of course they came back bright and early the next day. And the next show. Season after season, the same accounts pestered us, knocking louder on our door until we’d acquiesce and open up distribution to them. And when we did? They cherished The Hundreds and protected our brand, evangelizing our message to their communities.
The Hundreds felt special. The T-shirts felt special.
They felt special.
That first MAGIC, while our friends with the ironic tees and the cut-and-sew denim were racking up the numbers, we didn’t write a single order yet returned home victorious. One man’s failure is another man’s success. We hadn’t satiated the market’s appetite. Instead, we were sculpting our brand, chiseling away the fat, and investing in the long haul. Ben and I were confident; more important than making a quick buck off cheap accounts, we were strengthening our image and brand integrity by defining who we were—and, more important, who we were not.
The black tarp philosophy took us far in this business. I know it was arrogant, but it forced us to focus on a future, stay disciplined with our sales strategy, and control the quality of the retail partners with whom we would align The Hundreds’ name. Most of the brands on the floor at that MAGIC trade show lost their way, eventually taking that convenient $10,000 order from a shallow run-of-the-mill store and diluting their image in the process. They were all about making money—which is, obviously, incredibly important—but they forsook the importance of branding. Fashion rewards brands that can endure through the peaks and valleys of relevance. When you boil it down, it’s all about how many times you can say no. It’s a discipline. You have to train yourself to be comfortable with this word. If you’re greedy and profit-driven, that means saying no to an easy and available check. If you’re a people pleaser, prepare yourself to hurt feelings, be the asshole, and defend your brand against the interests of others.
Of course, I didn’t have this all mapped out in my head at the time. I thought a brand was something you sear into a cow’s ass; I never imagined I’d be giving brand-building lectures to crowded amphitheaters one day. We became accidental experts by simply playing the cards we were dealt. Ben and I were compensating for our lack of experience, money, and product offerings. Truthfully, deep down, underneath the rare Japanese sweatshirts and limited-edition New Eras, beneath that simmering bravado and snobbery, we knew we sucked donkey balls. I didn’t know how to design; we didn’t know the right people. T
he haters were right. We didn’t have enough money to afford a rolling rack to show our wrinkled T-shirts, let alone a full collection.
But we flipped the script and championed our weaknesses as strengths:
1. Because we were new, we offered a fresh take. The Hundreds was sexy and different, not imprisoned by routine. We broke the rules and made our own, and that attracted a lot of attention.
2. Because there wasn’t much product, The Hundreds was limited and rare. Nobody could get it because we couldn’t make it! That built a demand and energy around our clothing that can’t be bought or fabricated.
3. Without any money behind us, we did what we wanted. We were accountable to no one. We said no to everyone. And we maintained total creative control. The Hundreds came first then and continues to come first now. Our financial well-being, let alone someone else’s investment, doesn’t matter as much as the brand’s integrity. And we certainly don’t care about anyone else’s opinion.
What a couple of assholes.
18. FIGHT BACK
Your dreams are in danger, and “We Must Rise”
Our time has come we are under the gun “It’s Do or Die”
—Dropkick Murphys, “Do or Die”
“I DIDN’T KNOW you did a collaboration with American Eagle?” the tweet read. I was ambling through my mentions in 2009, right when the social media platforms had started picking up steam. This kid, one of my followers, attached a grainy cell phone shot of a freestanding display inside a mall store. There were rows of boxers on the rack, designed in collections of fun patterns like polka dots and anchors. “Look at the second row,” he noted. I zoomed in.
There was a set of white shorts printed all over with cartoon bombs making different facial expressions. The characters, however, looked strikingly familiar. I wasn’t the first to draw a spherical bomb with features, but the cartoon’s gaping mouth, spark, and black-white-red-yellow combination were an unmistakable lift of our mascot, Adam Bomb. But this wasn’t a The Hundreds account or one of our flagships. It was American Eagle Outfitters, a nationwide chain with thousands of stores. It looked as if the designer had literally traced over our cartoon and repeated it across the fabric. If our fans saw this, they could be misled into thinking this was an official collaboration between the brands.
Collaborations make up a considerable part of our sales, but they’re even more important for image and marketing, so we choose our partners carefully and strategically. Of course we hadn’t collaborated with American Eagle Outfitters and never would. Nothing wrong with the colossal retailer, but theirs was a well-oiled clothing company, while ours was an indie label. Plus, American Eagle’s style and aesthetic—washed cargo shorts and polos—didn’t sync with ours. American Eagle advertised shiny campaigns with frat boys wearing hemp necklaces. I designed what I knew: boxy T-shirts and hoodies to skate in. We needed to position ourselves as far away from American Eagle as possible.
Over the next couple days, our general in-box was flooded with more reconnaissance from the field. Tweets from fans, emails from customers, and texts from friends pinged in from around the country. These bootleg boxers were everywhere, and so was the ire of our followers. If something like this had happened today, we would have said it “went viral.” We wrote AEO a letter.
Surprise. They denied any wrongdoing, claiming their bomb character was original art. Then they asked how we could protect such a generic illustration.
This wasn’t the first time we’d been ripped off. Larger companies had stolen from us before; it’s not unusual in the fashion industry. Because fashion design can’t be copyrighted, the basis of the process is in pulling “inspiration” from peers and predecessors. Sometimes, the designer incorporates enough of a spin on an existing idea to create something relatively original. More often than not, however, the gray area between reference and rip-off is foggy. This is especially pronounced when the big dogs, staffed with bands of designers, ransack younger, smaller artists for fresh concepts.
The pattern on these American Eagle boxers wasn’t a trivial T-shirt graphic, though. Not some random design we had used for a season and left by the wayside. Adam Bomb was synonymous with our brand. More than a logo, he was our identity (imagine if they had printed Nike swooshes as a pattern), and now millions of people would associate my drawing with American Eagle Outfitters. Literally overnight, our icon had gone mainstream and, completely unintentionally, so had our brand.
Our lawyers (Ben and I) got involved. Their lawyers (a squad of eight or nine pit bulls in Brooks Brothers suits) got in the ring. And thus ensued a long, expensive, and arduous legal process. We tugged and tore for months, issuing hollow threats, puffing out our chests, and growling through negotiations. At first, AEO told us they’d cough up a flat fee for the art. As if we had freelanced the design and offered it to them. As if we were their gun for hire. As if they were doing us a favor! Like, are you effing serious, dude?
We dug our heels in and rallied the troops. When American Eagle informed us that they’d recalled the product from their shelves, I took to my blog and asked our nationwide Bomb Squad to visit their local mall and confirm that they were gone. This time, the evidence poured in. The boxers were not only still for sale; they were moving like hotcakes, taking up even more real estate in the shops. One by one, we forwarded the testimonies to American Eagle’s counsel, until they relented to discussing an ultimatum.
We never thought it would go so far. I didn’t think we had a chance of going toe-to-toe with this Goliath. We were up against a publicly traded company that raked in $3 billion a year. And here we were, in our ghetto-ass office on the outskirts of town, eating roach-coach tacos at our IKEA desks. I’d written off the boxers as a disappointing and plaguing loss, one of those lowlights that would stain our history. “Remember the time American Eagle got one over on us?” Their legal team could kidnap our Adam Bomb and crush us under their thumb, slowly siphoning us of time and funds. We couldn’t even afford a lawyer, so we manned up. We pooled whatever chops we’d doggy-bagged home from law school, did some quick push-ups, and answered the conference call.
“Hey, Bobby, hi, Ben, so we think we’ve come to a compromise.”
We bristled. Compromise? These culture vultures hijacked our brand identity and were trying to meet us halfway? Shouldn’t they walk their asses right back to where they were keeping our stolen shit and hand over our property?
“We will license your artwork”—I loved how they weren’t asking, they were telling!—“whereby you get a percentage of the boxers’ sales. The more we sell of your design, the more money you make. We both win here.”
Ben punched the mute button. We were upset, hopeless, and cast in silence. I watched our logo swirl down the drain, all the energy we’d packed into Adam Bomb—our first legitimate mainstream hit. The sticker campaigns, the baseball cap embroidery, the watermarks on all our blog photography—all wasted on twenty thousand pairs of lousy underwear. Our hands were tied. On the other end of the line, I visualized a ring of big-firm attorneys inside a palatial boardroom high atop a city skyscraper. Like a scene out of The Wolf of Wall Street. These jocks were probably high-fiving each other and cracking beers at our expense. This wasn’t a negotiation; it was a hostile takeover. It was robbery. Somehow, they were calling the shots.
Yet they weren’t the ones in power. The fact that a big corporation like this was billing attorney fees to placate two streetwear kids with a T-shirt line showed that they were worried. Maybe they wanted to exterminate the nuisance, or maybe they were nervous about the PR fallout. Or maybe we had more clout than we gave ourselves credit for. Instead of looking at this like American Eagle was too big to fail, we reminded ourselves that we were so small, we had nothing to lose.
Ben cracked a smile. I started laughing. There is nothing more powerful and frightening than someone who is hungry and desperate. Somebody who has everything to prove and the world to gain. This is why teenagers drive
culture, even without realizing it. They are reckless in the way they dream and fight for their futures. Childlike in wonder, romantic in revolt. The Hundreds’ greatest asset was a community who believed in us. We reached back and pitched as hard as we could with that.
“Hey, everyone, it’s Bobby and Ben. We had a chance to mull it over, and we’re rejecting the licensing deal. In fact, American Eagle is going to stop selling the boxers immediately.”
“I’m sorry. We don’t understand. There is a perfectly fair deal on the table. Listen, fellas, you’ll get more money than you could have ever imagined for this design. You can take a couple days to think about it.”
“Right. No. We thought about it,” I said, interrupting him. “And if you don’t stop selling the boxers, I am going to go on my blog and tell everyone about what happened here. We may be small, but you do know who reads my blog, right? Everyone from around the world who is monitoring the culture of street fashion, from the industry to the customers. The most influential tastemakers in the marketplace. Think of how this will make you look and how far that trickles down,” I threatened.
A female attorney jumped in from their side. “You’re not allowed to do that,” she said. “Or else we’ll sue.”
“Sue us? For what? You want a couple T-shirts off our backs? You can have ’em. Or perhaps you’ll take them without my permission anyway.” I let them sit on that. “Actually, I can do whatever I want, and I’ve already written up my exposé and am prepared to publish. Just say when.”
This Is Not a T-Shirt Page 12
