- Former editorial director of men’s contemporary fashion and streetwear website has co-founded story-driven, community-based online platform
- Audiovisual, advert-free digital publication based in Hong Kong celebrates creative culture in fashion, art, design, technology, music and food
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The global phenomenon that Hypebeast is today – a go-to online source for men’s contemporary fashion and streetwear – makes you forget that it started out in 2007 with just four young men blogging about sneakers from founder Kevin Ma’s Hong Kong flat.
Fast forward to 2017-18, Hypebeast’s revenue rose year-on-year by 77 per cent, resulting in its debut on Forbes’ “Asia’s Best Under A Billion” list in 2018. The ranking features the 200 top-performing Asia-Pacific public companies with less than US$1 billion in sales.
Yet in December 2016, just as the digital publication was enjoying huge popularity, its editorial director Eugene Kan and creative director Alex Maeland decided to leave Hypebeast and launch their own community-based, story-driven audiovisual online publication, MAEKAN.
“It was time,” Kan, 35, says. “I’m on a train, it’s come to a stop and it was time for me to get off.
“There was always a part of me that wanted to do my own thing. I realised that if I wanted to create something for myself and assume my own identity, then I had to step away and explore something else.”