ABOUT THE BRAND

The Hundreds people-first approach to driving long-term value

With deep roots in ‘90s workwear and California subculture, The Hundreds is a streetwear staple that’s as much about community as it is about style.

The Hundreds is where stories, style, and people collide. The brand was founded in 2003, and they’re known for blending the ‘90s streetwear aesthetic with culture and storytelling to build strong connections with its audience — and its mobile app is no exception.

With a mission that extends beyond fashion, The Hundreds prioritizes people over products, building community through every design, event, and collaboration. The brand has positioned itself as a cultural hub for its loyal fan base while seeking to attract a new generation of streetwear enthusiasts.

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THE CHALLENGE

Engaging new audiences while staying faithful to legacy customers

The Hundreds has been a Tapcart partner for 5 years, with their mobile app growing into the cornerstone of their omnichannel strategy.

Sandy Mosqueda, Digital Brand Manager, has seen the mobile app’s growth during her tenure with The Hundreds.

“For the six years that I've been here, Tapcart has always been in the conversation. I was able to learn from it from the very beginning stages of digital marketing up until now, where we're really utilizing the app for our overall omnichannel strategy.”

With a small team and no in-house developers, The Hundreds relies on their mobile app with Tapcart to build their community, tell stories, and grow brand loyalty — all while staying agile.

Sandy says the brand has felt the pressure in 2024. Between rising ecommerce costs (i.e., digital ads) and the audience’s fragmented attention on digital platforms, they’ve needed to refine their strategy. Ads are becoming more expensive, with diminishing returns. As a result, The Hundreds has had to shift focus, emphasizing audience engagement in new ways.

A key challenge has been balancing the needs of two distinct audiences: long-time customers who grew up with the brand and a new generation of streetwear fans.

“We're hit with this double whammy of needing to make sure our core customer feels that we still represent them, that we're still talking to them, while also trying to [talk to] this new audience.”

To keep both audiences engaged, the brand needed a solution to continue telling stories in a way that resonates with both its core audience and new customers.

Their solution? Doubling down on the community and culture that’s defined the brand since its inception — with their mobile app driving that growth forward.

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THE SOLUTION

Making the mobile app a hub for community and commerce

After conducting a marketing channel audit, The Hundreds’ team confirmed that their mobile app was home to their most engaged audience. Customers using the app were shopping regularly, responding to push notifications, and attending events. The audit made it clear that the app was more than a sales tool — it was a critical hub for community engagement and brand extension.

"Our app has our core base that continues to come out to these events. Not only are they still shopping with us, and not only are they involved with push notifications, and their retention is still there, but this is a customer that's also coming out to these events and making an effort to build these relationships and friendships with us.”
‍Sandy Mosqueda, Digital Brand Manager at The Hundreds

Brand extension across physical and digital spaces

The Hundreds’ mobile app bridges the brand’s digital and physical spaces to create a seamless, omnichannel experience for customers. By promoting events through the app, they encourage in-person interactions. And in-person customers are encouraged to engage with the app through QR codes displayed throughout the retail location.

Using Custom Blocks, The Hundreds curates the app experience to match its brand vision. They create the feeling of a digital magazine, playing on the younger generation’s love for throwback content and real experiences. It integrates cultural stories alongside retail offerings, creating a space where community, commerce, and culture coexist.

Maximizing push notifications without creating customer fatigue

The Hundred’s push notifications do more than sling products. They take a strategic approach to push notifications, balancing frequency with variety to prevent customer fatigue. They typically send 2–3 push notifications a week outside sales events.

They also use the Klaviyo integration to send highly targeted push notifications based on customer behavior and location, driving conversations more effectively than email or SMS marketing. 

Types of content: 

• Blog updates
• Alerts about low-stock items
• New arrivals
• Sales and special offers
• Wishlist reminders

The Hundreds’ team alternates the focus of notifications to keep the content fresh and relevant, ensuring customers stay engaged without feeling overwhelmed.

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THE STRATEGY

Building a community hub to maximize customer engagement

The Hundreds’ mobile app now accounts for 20% of the brand’s total revenue. This has been critical in 2024 as rising ad costs and declining attention on social media make it harder and more expensive to reach customers through other channels.

Unlike ads or sponsorships, engagement through push notifications comes at no additional cost. It’s given the team an efficient and effective way to connect with customers. “[The app] is where we're going to keep trying to make sure our customers feel heard”, said Sandy. “That's where we're going to keep communicating with them.” 

With an average order value (AOV) of $125 in the app — compared to $110 on the website — app users are more likely to make larger purchases. The mobile app delivers a much more streamlined experience, offering fewer distractions to distract users from completing their purchases.

Designing an app experience that builds brand loyalty

More than a digital storefront, The Hundreds’ mobile app is a community hub fostering engagement. Customers use the app to explore content and connect with the brand beyond product purchases.

The Hundreds’ team designed their mobile app to go beyond a typical retail platform, turning it into a central hub for community engagement. It reflects the spirit of their brand, combining storytelling, culture, and commerce. Much like their brick-and-mortar store in Los Angeles, the app is a space where customers can explore and engage — and just hang out.

“We don't have an app just to make it a digital sales channel. Of course, it is that. But we also want to make sure that it serves a bunch of different ways as well. One of them is through exclusive pieces of content… Tapcart has a lot of awesome partners that are able to integrate social videos or bring in other features that are not limited to shopping. That’s what makes us stand out as a brand using an app rather than just creating another sales channel. And Tapcart really makes that possible”
‍Sandy Mosqueda, Digital Brand Manager at The Hundreds

Here is the type of content they use to power their community hub:

• Exclusive content and sneak peeks
  • Updates on upcoming projects from the founders, Bobby and Ben
• Early product releases and limited editions
  • First access to products that often sell out quickly
  • Unique colorways and limited-edition drops exclusive to the app
• Special discounts and offers
  • Free shipping windows
  • Exclusive discounted codes only available through the app
• Storytelling through collabs and features
  • Behind-the-scenes stories about product collaborations and partnerships
  • Profiles that highlight the people and culture behind their designs

The combination of content and commerce transforms the app into a digital magazine that feels true to the brand.

The success shows in the numbers. The app boasts a 98% retention rate. Users aren’t just shopping — they’re building long-term connections with the brand. The mobile app encourages customer loyalty and helps them remain part of The Hundreds’ community.

“We know that the people that download this app are not only using it, but they're shopping with us, they're communicating with us. So we want to make sure that we're giving them not only the most pleasant shopping experience but also providing them with extra details like exclusive discount codes or exclusive content, maybe even an exclusive colorway.”
‍Sandy Mosqueda, Digital Brand Manager at The Hundreds

Putting their efforts into the mobile app is a top priority for the brand. “Any customer that gets moved onto the app becomes much more valuable than the customer that would be shopping on social media or the website,” said Sandy. The app’s conversion rate is nearly double that of the website.

Driving operational efficiency and flexibility

Tapcart helps The Hundreds’ small team keep their app fresh and aligned with their brand resources, with minimal lift. The platform allows them to quickly upload new products, run campaigns, and make quick adjustments — which is especially critical for their collaborations.

Some of their past collaborations with Sesame Street and Disney required them to remove their iconic “bomb” logo to make the app more family-friendly. Using Custom Blocks and Image Blocks, they can implement creative changes quickly, ensuring they always meet their partners’ branding needs.

This level of efficiency helps the team stay nimble, saving time and resources while ensuring the app always feels intentional and polished. “Being able to have all that flexibility within the branding is huge. It's really necessary,” said Sandy.

Compared to ads and sponsorships — which can be expensive and don’t always yield the desired results — push notifications allow them to connect with customers at no extra cost. Trying to reach customers through other digital channels has proven to be more costly, which is why the team will be prioritizing the app for the rest of Q4 and going into 2025.

Sandy said the mobile app’s ability to increase incremental revenue without additional marketing spend has made a strong impact internally. “It makes me sound really good to our VP,” she said.

How the app drove big results during tentpole sales

The Hundreds maximizes performance during key sales events, creating exclusive experiences for app users that drive conversations and engagement. The mobile app plays a vital role in turning casual shoppers into repeat buyers through early sales access, targeted push notifications, and exclusive product releases.

During the Labor Day Sale, the app generated 26% of the brand’s total sales — the highest percentage of any channel outside their ecommerce site. The mobile app also accounted for 23% of sales during their semi-annual sale. This performance shows how the app has become essential to their seasonal strategy. It serves as a seamless, always-ready platform for high-impact campaigns during peak shopping periods.

The team can easily upload new products, create early sale access, and quickly adjust campaigns to align with their partners’ guidelines. Push notifications make it easy to announce sales or low-stock alerts in real time, ensuring customers stay engaged without added marketing costs. This helps The Hundreds prepare efficiently for key events like BFCM and semi-annual sales, keeping campaigns coordinated, relevant, and impactful throughout the season.

Ahead of major events like BFCM, the team prepares by driving app downloads to ensure they have an engaged audience ready to take advantage of early promotions. These efforts ensure that the most loyal customers feel prioritized, reinforcing the app's value as more than just a sales channel.

“Customers are taking their time to get off of Instagram, to get off Twitter, whatever their favorite app might be. The Hundreds is in conversation alongside that, and that's very, very valuable. That's the customer that keeps shopping with us, and that's the customer that really, really cares.”
‍Sandy Mosqueda, Digital Brand Manager at The Hundreds

The impressive Labor Day numbers highlighted the app’s success in driving incremental value and growing its customer base. This performance sparked momentum within the team, with leadership recognizing the app’s potential as a key revenue driver. As a result, The Hundreds doubled down on the app for upcoming sales events, prioritizing it as a key driver for customer engagement and revenue optimization through Q4 and beyond. 

Building on the app’s success through 2025

As The Hundreds continues to evolve, the app will remain central to its strategy, as both a sales tool and a hub for community engagement. "We realized that the app could be just more than a social experience. It could also be a place where people just hang out, and it could be a place where people could read blogs, that it could be a place where we could upload exclusive content, exclusive videos, just things that normally would live on other platforms. But this is much more central".

The goal isn’t just to drive transactions but to foster connections. Whether customers shop, engage with content, or simply browse, The Hundreds is committed to creating a seamless and pressure-free experience.

“[The app] is an easy experience for our customers. There's no distractions, no sponsored ads. There's nothing that isn’t core pieces of information. And whether a customer decides to shop with us or whether they just decide to consume this content, we're happy with either.”
‍Sandy Mosqueda, Digital Brand Manager at The Hundreds

Providing value remains the priority, even in a challenging economic environment. By maintaining a focus on storytelling, exclusive content, and community, The Hundreds will continue to leverage their app as a space where culture and commerce thrive — positioning them for success in 2025 and beyond.

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