Sitting in an empty room above Hype’s new Carnaby Street store, which doesn’t even have enough chairs for both founders Liam Green and Bav Samani, it’s hard to imagine what the space will become. But the pair have big plans.

The new 2,700 sq ft store has two floors, one for its adult range and another for kidswear. The space will also feature “fun” elements such as The Vault, a product vending machine, a photo booth and a glass box with money blowers.

The Vault is an element borrowed from the brand’s online shop. Customers who make a purchase will have access to the space, which will feature limited-edition products or special promotions inside.

Hype will also run treasure hunts around the store to find access codes to the vault and both floors will have a happy hour when alarms will be set off to signal a promotion.

Co-founder and creative Green says: “We’re not intending on making our millions from this store. The revenue that we do generate is just a bonus – the main focus is having this event space where it’s always changing and will excite the customer, especially somewhere like Carnaby Street where there are so many tourists that come.”

Carnaby Street owner Shaftesbury has given Hype permission to revamp the store whenever and however they please, with plans in the works to wrap it in new exteriors and feature new displays when the brand collaborates with others. Its Looney Tunes collaboration, for example, has already been hugely successful and the two brands will launch a second iteration later this year.

Upcoming projects include a kidswear and homewares launch with Next, a collaboration with Juice to create patterned battery packs and other tech gadgets, a Boots Christmas gift and optic frames in partnership with Specsavers.

“In one week, we flipped everything. We recruited like crazy because online sales were up like nothing before”

Liam Green, Hype

Prior to the pandemic, Hype was 70% wholesale, with key partners such as Next and Zalando, but this changed as retailers and consumers tightened their belts.

“In one week, we flipped everything,” says Green. “Covid hit, everything closed, we got 3 million cancellations in one week from our retail partners.

“A week later, everything turned around very quickly. We put everything online and went back to our grassroots, and brought all our staff back in. We recruited like crazy because online sales were up like nothing before.”

First founded in 2011, Hype was created by Green and Samani when they still worked for a fast fashion supplier in Leicester – the former as a designer and the latter as an account manager.

Their first product, a lighter emblazoned with the slogan ‘Get your own f***ing lighter’ went viral, but the Hype brand image was cemented when the pair won a Facebook T-shirt competition.

Their design – a ”defaced” image of Albert Einstein complete with ear-stretchers and tattoos – sold out within a matter of hours after printing and garnered the attention of Topman.

“We sold 100 T-shirts within two hours on our website and got a message from Topman to ask if we could come in for a meeting,” explains Samani. 

“We made a collection within two weeks in Leicester and delivered it ourselves to Oxford Circus. Within three to four weeks, we expanded and we were in 200 stores within three months. 

“After that, we went international – it was ridiculous to see our stuff in stores in Las Vegas and LA. Within six months, it was everywhere. After that, it went crazy – Asos, Next, JD, John Lewis, House of Fraser. We were in 26 countries, 3,500 points of sale.”

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