Hypebeast’s Kevin Ma Doesn’t Care About Sneakers Anymore

Kevin Ma doesn’t want to discuss his shoes. In fact, he’d rather talk about just about anything else. The Hypebeast founder and I met during New York Fashion Week in the library of his friend’s penthouse apartment near the Hudson River in Soho. He’s been living in Hong Kong for some time now, but Ma wasn’t here to see runway walks—he had actually just turned down a seat at that night’s most sought-after show, Calvin Klein’s Jaws-themed 2019 collection. Ma, it seemed, was a bit bored with fashion. He wanted to talk about reading instead. Ma started the sneaker blog Hypebeast back in 2005 when he couldn’t find intel on new kick releases. A student in Vancouver at the time, he grew the website so quickly that he soon left his cushy finance career to dedicate himself to the platform. Just over a decade later—and with a thriving e-commerce arm and more than 5 million Instagram followers—he listed Hypebeast Limited on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s Growth Enterprise Market; it was the best-performing Asian IPO debut (paywall) of 2016. Read more at Quartz.