Now, the company is grappling with the scale needed to reach profitability, while navigating a new gaming and streetwear landscape that has returned to normal after a pandemic surge.
100 Thieves has been described before “The Supreme of eSports”, Arguably the largest fashion-streetwear label born out of the gaming community, it is the first to mass-produce T-shirts with simple logos. The brand is bolstered by a strong network of gaming talent promoting its drops and events — from TikTok mega-influencer Vinnie Hacker, who signed on in 2022, to co-owner Rachel “Valkyre” Hofstetter. A gaming star with over four million followers on YouTube, Hofstetter became one of the first gamers to attend Milan Fashion Week in February, sitting in the front row of Gucci. Talents signed with 100 Thieves – whether as ambassadors or as members of their eSports teams – work in apparel shoots and create content for the company’s YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and TikTok channels.
The initial ambition wasn’t to become a full-blown e-sports organization or even a business, says Haag, speaking from Compound’s design room, which features hoodies and printed tees from its recent Pokemon collab as well. Full of upcoming prototypes. Collaborate with Adidas. Haag, now 31, started in esports at the age of 14 as a professional Call of Duty player. He achieved world champion status on YouTube before turning to gaming through streams and vlogs, which proved more lucrative than eSports at the time. 100 Thieves began as a passion project so that Haag, like many gamers, could sell merchandise to his Internet fanbase.
“I just wanted to make costumes that said ‘if you knew, you knew’. If you were into gaming, hopefully you were excited about this,” he says. “But the idea was that if you weren’t there, and saw someone walking down the street, you wouldn’t know it was related to gaming.”
Things got serious after Haag was introduced to Dan Gilbert, a billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the NBA team Cleveland Cavaliers, who had recently invested in StockX. After meeting Haag at the 2017 NBA Finals, believing in the platform’s potential as an entertainment platform and lifestyle brand, Gilbert led a $10 million seed round to get 100 Thieves off the ground. In 2018, rapper Drake and music manager Scooter Braun also invested and became co-owners; Hofstadter and Dunlap followed in 2021.
Navigating streetwear after the pandemic
For Haag, there was an empty space to be filled with high end gamer merchandise that was not cheaply produced by third parties with low quality clothing. “I didn’t want it to look like gamer merchandise or YouTube merchandise. I wanted it to be something that people would really respect or take seriously.”
