INTERVIEW: Hypebeast.com founder Kevin Ma

Having started out as a blogger looking for excuses to avoid attending uninspiring classes at university, Ma is today in charge of one of the world’s most authoritative online publications on youth fashion and culture — Hypebeast.com.

The Hong Kong-based online magazine is a major source of information for those looking to stay ahead of the curve in the areas of niche luxury and street fashion, design and technology. Brands discussed range from rare and highly sought after Japanese labels such as Visvim to the likes of Louis Vuitton to BMW. Today, it attracts up to three million unique visitors and 20 million page views globally every month.

Ma charts the site’s evolution from a blog he started as a hobby back in 2005 while studying economics and psychology. “I didn’t like to go to class, but I was really interested in the internet and the youth culture that was growing at the time,” he recalls. “A lot of [print] magazines talked about where to get cool clothing but there was nothing online. So I started a site and talked about fashion and lifestyle trends.

“We started out by finding cool stuff online and aggregating it. It was a platform for sharing. I didn’t really think about where it was going to go. Eventually I put ads on it using Google AdSense and remember being excited that I was able to make a few bucks a day.”

On graduating, he took a job at a bank but kept the site going. It was when the income from Hypebeast overtook what he earned from his day job that he realised he was onto something. He left the bank and has never looked back.

“It’s been quite a journey,” he said, noting that the company no longer uses AdSense but works directly with advertisers, offering a range of formats from standard display to specially designed units, microsites and customised campaigns and offline events. Ma said, however, that he has been careful to ensure the site retains its original uncluttered appearance since too many ads would detract not only from the content but from each other.

In one example of customisation, Hypebeast worked with adidas around the 2010 FIFA World Cup to engage people in a competition synchronised with the tournament itself. Brand launches have taken the form of parties at retail spaces with an assortment of celebrities and relevant influencers in attendance.

While Ma said Hypebeast’s biggest readership resides in purely English-speaking markets such as the US, Canada and the UK, it also has a relatively strong following in Asia, particularly in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. The bulk of the audience consists of tech-aware male consumers aged 18-35, but Ma says the site also acts as a resource for marketers, buyers and others in the fashion industry seeking “trends and ideas to get inspired by”. Websites with a similar proposition exist — such as Honeyee.com in Japan — but Ma is keen to embrace content sharing rather than competition.

“We create content that another site might borrow, and if someone else produces a cool piece of content, we borrow it and link it back. We see it as an ecosystem — not a competitive ecosystem, but more one where you help each other and where you can grow together.”

The move to original content production has of course been key to Hypebeast’s success. Aside from news updates, Hypebeast stages photoshoots for brands and operates a video content division, HBTV.

“A lot of brands hit us up on a daily basis,” Ma said. “But we’re very selective because we have a responsibility to make sure these products are good. We rely on intuition that we have built up — whether something is going to set a trend for the next season. We didn’t study fashion. We just learned what’s cool and what’s not.”

With the US a core market, the editorial staff operates in shifts seven days a week. Ma described it as a “grind”—but an enjoyable one. Work in progress includes the development of an app to expand interaction within the site’s already highly active social community, optimising the site’s mobile version, which Ma said “is a big part of the future”, and expanding video content production capabilities. But most intriguingly, Ma said he is contemplating the launch of a print product as a complement to the site.

“People think it’s crazy—going backwards—but it’s a passion project. I’ve always liked print magazines. You can dive deeper into each object and learn more about it. Plus it looks good on the coffee table. As much as I love online, I equally love print, and this is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. Our site is big enough now that we can promote it and get the word out. It would be much more difficult to do the other way around.”