Streetwear site Hypebeast as of yesterday is now a public company, listed under the ticker 8359 on the Hong Kong stock exchange. According to Bloomberg, it had the best debut of any Asian initial public offering this year with 500 million shares initially listed at HK $0.13 jumping up to HK $1.05 by end of day, a 708 percent jump.
Based in Hong Kong and founded in 2005 by Kevin Ma, the company, according to The Business of Fashion plans to use 35 percent of the proceeds from the listing to boost sales and marketing. Ma commented, “We’ve been bootstrapped since day one. We never raised any money since we’ve started. We looked at private investors and venture capitalists, but we felt more comfortable going this route. It was a personal choice, I guess. We met the requirements for the exchange so we thought, why not try this out?”
In addition to Hypebeast.com, the company’s enterprises include HBX, an e-commerce site, Popbee, a woman’s fashion site and Hypetrak, a music publication and app, altogether attracting a total of 8 million readers during the first quarter of 2016. The company’s is split between advertising and product sales.
