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How Hypebeast went from a sneaker blog to global streetwear force

  • One of the world’s pre-eminent authorities on streetwear, Hypebeast employs almost 300 people and gets 77 million page views a month
  • Its 25-year-old editor-in-chief Arby Li explains his role in the website’s rise and how joining the company was an unpopular decision with his family

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Arby Li, editor-in-chief of Hypebeast, photographed at a Bauer Media Australia presentation in Sydney last week.

In another era, Arby Li might have been working in an entry-level job in a London law firm by now. Instead, at 25, he finds himself at the epicentre of the streetwear industry.

Five years after joining as an intern, Li is the editor-in-chief of Hypebeast, a website considered one of the world’s pre-eminent authorities on streetwear.

The website is operated by a media and e-commerce start-up of the same name listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It was Asia’s best-performing debut stock of 2016 and appeared on Forbes’ 2018 “Best Under a Billion” list of the top 200 Asia-Pacific companies with less than US$1 billion in sales.

In the 2017-18 financial year, the company posted a profit increase of 94 per cent, to US$5.8 million, while sales rose 77 per cent year-on-year to US$49 million.

Sneakers are still one of the main topics on the Hypebeast website.
Sneakers are still one of the main topics on the Hypebeast website.

Launched in 2005 as an English-language sneaker blog from founder Kevin Ma’s bedroom in Vancouver, Hypebeast is now a pop culture enterprise that employs almost 300 people, with foreign-language websites in traditional and simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and French.

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