Your drop goes live in five weeks. The samples came back right, the lookbook is shot, the Shopify page is half built, and someone on your team just asked the question that has been sitting in the back of your head since you started the brand: can we get this on Hypebeast?
Maybe. Hypebeast runs product news every day, and a large share of it covers releases from labels most readers have never heard of. But the brands that land there are rarely the ones with the best product. They are the ones whose release shows up in an editor’s inbox at the right moment, with the right images, framed in a way the site already writes about. This guide covers how to get featured on Hypebeast by doing that on purpose, from what the site publishes to what to do after you hit send.
What does Hypebeast actually cover?
Hypebeast started in 2005 as a sneaker blog run by Kevin Ma in Hong Kong. Two decades later, the main site’s menu splits coverage into Fashion, Footwear, Art, Design, Music and Lifestyle, plus video, a print magazine and an annual list called Hypebeast100. There is also a Drops section on the site that tracks upcoming releases. The parent company, Hypebeast Limited, is listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under stock code 150. A 2022 plan to list on Nasdaq through a SPAC merger with Iron Spark I fell apart when the deal could not close by its December 2022 deadline, and the company still reports results in Hong Kong.
The group is bigger than one website. Hypebae is its women’s editorial site, covering fashion, streetwear and culture. Hypeart covers art and Hypegolf covers golf. HBX is the group’s retail arm, selling men’s and women’s product online and through physical stores. Hypemaker is its in-house creative agency, which builds paid campaigns for brands. Knowing the difference between these is the first thing that separates a useful pitch from a wasted one, and we will come back to it.
For a new brand, the Fashion and Footwear verticals are where most product news lives. The typical post is short: a headline naming the brand and product, a few paragraphs on what it is, who made it, what makes it different, and the release date, price and where to buy. Then a gallery. That format tells you most of what an editor needs from you before you ever write a word. They need a clear product, a real release date, a price, a place to buy it, and images good enough to carry a post on their own.
Hypebeast also runs interviews, brand profiles and longer features, which tend to go to brands with a story bigger than one release. Your first feature will probably be a release post, not a profile. That is fine. A clean release post is how editors learn your name.
Find the right door before you write
Hypebeast does not publish a dedicated tip line or a submissions email on its site. Its contact page routes general enquiries, including editorial ones, through a contact form. Advertising goes through a separate advertise page, and the group’s press and corporate news sits in its newsroom. So you have two honest routes: the form, and direct outreach to the editors who cover your category.
The form is a general inbox, so write as if the reader will forward your message to someone else. For direct outreach, read the site for two or three weeks before your pitch. Look at bylines on posts that cover brands at your size and in your category. Those writers are your list. Their professional contact details are often on their own social profiles or on media databases. Do not guess email formats and blast twenty addresses. That is how you end up filtered.
Now, the sister sites. If your product is women’s or genderless and the styling skews toward that audience, Hypebae may be the better first target. It is a separate editorial team with its own coverage, not a mirror of Hypebeast. If your release is a sculpture, a print series or an art collaboration, Hypeart is the natural fit. Pitching the right property shows you read the publication.
HBX is a different kind of door entirely. It is a retailer. Getting stocked there is a wholesale and buying conversation, not an editorial one, and sending a press release to a retail buyer, or a line sheet to an editor, wastes both of your time. The same goes for Hypemaker. If you want a guaranteed placement with set dates and creative control, that is a paid campaign, and the conversation belongs with the commercial team. Paid work and earned coverage are separate tracks. Know which one you are asking for.
One more practical note. Hypebeast’s own site states that legitimate company emails come from addresses ending in @hypebeast.com or @101medialab.com, and it asks people to report anyone claiming to represent the company from another domain. If someone emails you offering a “guaranteed Hypebeast feature” for a fee from a Gmail address, that is not Hypebeast.
Time the drop and shoot images an editor can run
If you want to know how to get featured on Hypebeast for a specific release, start with timing. Release coverage works on the editor’s calendar, not yours. A post about a drop has the most value to readers a few days before it goes live, when they can still set a reminder. That means the editor needs your information well before then. Pitch on drop day and you are asking someone to publish news that already happened.
We use a readiness check with brands before any release pitch, and we call it the LACE check. Each letter is a question you should be able to answer yes to before you contact anyone.
L is for lead time. Is your release date, time and time zone locked, and are you reaching out at least two to three weeks before it? For a collaboration or anything you want treated as a feature rather than a quick post, give more room than that. If the date might still slip, wait. An editor who schedules a post around a date you then move will remember.
A is for assets. Do you have product images on a clean background, shot straight on and at three-quarter angles, plus detail shots of the materials, hardware or construction? Do you have at least a few styled or on-body images, and a lookbook if it is a collection? Are the files high resolution, named so a stranger can tell what they are, and hosted in one shareable folder rather than attached to the email? Hypebeast posts are built around galleries. If your images look like phone snaps under fluorescent light, the story will not run no matter how good the product is.
C is for context. Can you say in one sentence why this release matters beyond the fact that it exists? Context is the angle. It might be a material no one else in your price range uses, a factory partnership, a reference to a subculture the site already covers, or a collaborator with their own following. “Our new hoodie drops Friday” has no context. “A Portland label is making hoodies from deadstock military wool, sewn ten minutes from its shop” does.
E is for exclusivity and essentials. Are you offering this editor something first, like the first look at images or a short window before you send the release more widely? And are the essentials in the email itself: price in local currency, release date and time, where to buy, sizes or edition size, and the credits for who designed and photographed it? An editor who has to write back asking for the price will often move on to the next pitch instead.
Most brands that miss fail on A or C: unpublishable images, or no reason a reader should care. Fix those two first.
The site publishes no rule on the best day to pitch. In our experience, avoiding Friday afternoons and the days around fashion weeks or giant brand releases gives a small label a better chance of being read.
Write the pitch like a release note, not a press release
The best pitch to a product news editor reads like the first draft of the post they would write. Lead with the brand name, the product and the date in the subject line. Something like “First look: [Brand] deadstock wool hoodie, drops Nov 14” tells an editor what it is before they open it.
In the body, open with one sentence of context, the C from your LACE check. Then give two short paragraphs. The first covers what the product is and what makes it distinct, in concrete terms: the fabric, the construction, the inspiration, the collaborator. The second covers the essentials: price, date, time, where to buy, sizes or quantity. End with a link to the image folder and a line offering the founder or designer for a quick quote or interview.
That is the whole pitch, short enough to read on one phone screen. Do not attach a PDF press release and say “see attached.” Do not open with your brand’s mission statement or your follower count. And do not call the product iconic, groundbreaking or a must-have. Editors who cover streetwear daily will skip anything that sounds like ad copy.
Write it for one person. Mention, in one sentence, a post they wrote that relates to your release, and explain how yours is different. That shows your product belongs in a story they are already telling.
Our guide on how to pitch journalists covers subject lines and follow-up timing in more depth. If your brand leans toward tailoring, read how to get featured in GQ, and if your release is artist merch, see how to get featured in music media.
What happens after you hit send?
Usually nothing, for a few days. Editors at a site publishing this much product news get a heavy volume of pitches, and silence is not rejection.
Follow up once, about four or five working days after your first email, and add something new rather than asking “did you see this?” A new detail, a fresh image, a confirmed stockist or a collaborator’s name gives the editor a reason to look again. If you still hear nothing a week before the drop, you can send the release to the wider list you held back while offering exclusivity, and let the editor know you have done so. That keeps you honest and keeps the relationship intact for next time.
If a post runs, thank the writer, share it, and ask for edits only if a fact is wrong. Your second release is where the relationship builds, so keep the same contact person, the same clean asset folder and the same LACE discipline for every drop after that.
If nothing runs, audit the pitch. Were the images publishable? Was the context strong enough? Did the release date give them room? The answer is almost always in one of the four LACE letters. A brand that fixes the weak letter and comes back with a better second drop has a much stronger case than one that sends the same pitch to a different editor.
Knowing how to get featured on Hypebeast is less about who you know or how much you spend. It is about showing up early, with images that carry a post and a reason the site’s readers should care, in the inbox of the person who covers exactly what you make.
So, five weeks out from your drop: which of the four LACE letters is your weakest right now, and what would it take to fix it before you send the first email?