The Glossy 50 honors the year’s biggest changemakers across fashion and beauty. More from the series →
Where Huckberry goes, its community follows — and grows, and shops.
As such, the Austin-based menswear retailer is an outlier in a landscape full of brands chasing community, which is par for the course.
With founders Andy Forch and Richard Greiner at the helm, 14-year-old Huckberry has always gone its own way, and that has served the company well — allowing it avoid the pitfalls of excessive funding; thrive as a direct-to-consumer business; develop a “design house” of successful owned brands; and go all in on content, including video, before the strategy became trendy. The company is independent, founder-controlled and profitable, and it grew its e-commerce sales — which accounted for 100% of the business until August — by double digits this year.
For Huckberry, 2025 marked a year of channel expansion, which included opening permanent physical retail for the first time and growing its content play to include Netflix-ready video series — they can currently be viewed on YouTube and all United Airlines flights.
“Storytelling is the future of marketing,” Greiner told Glossy. “And because we made investments [in storytelling] way before it was a thing, that’s a true differentiator and core competency for us; it puts us in a good position when we’re launching brick and mortar to have those tailwinds and that built-in expertise. Now, we have to build the retail expertise.”
When Glossy spoke to Greiner and now chief brand officer Ben O’Meara in 2018, Huckberry’s content-heavy email newsletter, which was being sent three times a week to more than 1 million recipients, was driving monthly sales in the seven figures.
In August, the company opened its first store, in Washington, D.C., after testing the retail waters with a NYC pop-up pre-pandemic. The store is profitable and “way above plan,” in terms of sales expectations, Forch said. The company quickly built on that retail footprint, opening a second store, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, in November. From here, the plan is to open 2-3 stores per year.
According to Greiner, Huckberry’s expansion into stores was driven, in part, by customer demand, as communicated in its regular focus groups. The opportunity to acquire customers with high lifetime value, retain customers who can finally pinpoint their perfect fit and continuously collect rich customer feedback sealed the deal, he said.
For Huckberry, every move is carefully considered, with its brands informed by its customers, and its store designs and video series informed by its brands.
The company’s owned brands drive 55-60% of sales. Each is shaped by Huckberry’s three “expressions of adventure,” as described by Forch: The Flint & Tinder brand is rugged, the Wills brand is refined, and the Proof brand is ready, meaning for an activity or the outdoors. Its buyers round out the product assortment — ensuring “good, better and best” options in each category — during seasonal buying trips to Paris, Tokyo, NYC and L.A. Within its stores, “rugged,” “refined” and “ready” sections have been carved out, plus the company has reserved room for multiple media concepts, like a listening wall with curated music and the company’s shows playing on ‘80s-era TVs.
“Our stores realize our vision of marrying product and media, or rich storytelling,” Forch said.
In 2020, the company built out a media team. And, this year, it “doubled down on media,” given the “green shoots” on that side of the business and the rising acquisition costs on Facebook and Google, Forch said. The in-house team now includes six people dedicated to video. They produce shows including “Huckberry Homes,” “Dirt,” “Shop Class” and “Type 2 Fun,” each tied to a Huckberry house-brand persona. The shows are currently being shopped around to Amazon and Netflix. According to Forch, 75% of Huckberry’s YouTube audience views its shows on TV.
“We’re building out a funnel where our product calendar is driving where our media shows go,” Forch said. “[For example,] for one of our house brands, the fall concept was Maine — so our show went to Maine, and the talent is wearing the key looks you’re going to see on e-commerce and on the mannequins in-store.”
Though the brand formerly hosted its show releases in sold-out movie theaters, it now hosts them in its stores, along with interactive Q&As with the people behind them. Its stores also host events with brand partners and run clubs with local communities.
Despite the fact that women often buy for men, men themselves account for 75% of Huckberry’s sales, which Greiner attributed to men being “more comfortable” in Huckberry’s ecosystem compared to a typical, high-pressure retail environment. Huckberry’s knack for balancing aspiration and approachability — including through its ambassadors, which span “regular dudes doing cool things” and celebrities — is also a factor, Greiner said. In 2022, to promote his book, Matthew McConaughey appeared in a Huckberry video series. According to Forch, the actor deemed Huckberry, along with Joe Rogan, an essential means for reaching male audiences.
Despite much growth and evolution, Huckberry’s founders plan to retain its focus — as a “one-stop men’s shop” that bridges the worlds of fashion, as found in a Nordstrom, and the outdoor industry — think: REI. “We want to really own the idea of everyday adventure, and adventures near and far,” Forch said.
And Greiner and Forch are enjoying the ride.
“We’re scratching our own itch, at the end of the day; it’s a very fun company to build,” Forch said. “We often get asked, ‘Do you guys ever want to sell?’ And the answer is, ‘[If that were to happen] we would honestly just want to do the exact same thing again with the same people.’”
