So boys, Hippy Tree started out in South Bay, is that where you grew up too?
We were raised in LA County in a town called La Habra Heights amongst coyotes, hawks and rattlesnakes… hence our interest in nature.

Hippy Tree has deep roots in graffiti. Can you describe a little of that history and the transition to clothing?
I wouldn’t say deep graffiti roots, but yeah, there was a little graffiti going on. I used to be a wetsuit designer for Body Glove Wetsuits. Our offices were next to a train yard. I started to hit up this yard with my boss during our lunch breaks and after work. My friends called me “Hippy” because I had long dreads at the time, so naturally my graffiti name was Hippy. I was pretty into freight train graffiti for about a year or so. I was doing a lot of surf photography at the time … still do. I was photographing the local surf scene and landscape of the South Bay, but wasn’t having the best of luck getting my work published. I decided to design and self publish my own mini publications titled “South Bay.” I distributed these mini-zines with my photography for free through local South Bay and LA County surf shops. The shops were into them and encouraged me to make something they could sell. I came back to the shops a year later with a South Bay wall calendar, tidebook, t-shirt and sticker. The rest is kind of history. From then I started making more calendars and t-shirts and clothing and kept progressing. I was already doing a lot of technical wetsuit design at Body Glove so making the transition to designing clothing was a natural process. I brought on my childhood friend Josh to help with the sales and marketing and now we are 5 years deep in doing HippyTree.

CB: Where do you call home?
ANDREW: I wouldn’t say deep graffiti roots, but yeah, there was a little graffiti going on. I used to be a wetsuit designer for Body Glove Wetsuits. Our offices were next to a train yard. I started to hit up this yard with my boss during our lunch breaks and after work. My friends called me “Hippy” because I had long dreads at the time, so naturally my graffiti name was Hippy. I was pretty into freight train graffiti for about a year or so. I was doing a lot of surf photography at the time … still do. I was photographing the local surf scene and landscape of the South Bay, but wasn’t having the best of luck getting my work published. I decided to design and self publish my own mini publications titled “South Bay.” I distributed these mini-zines with my photography for free through local South Bay and LA County surf shops. The shops were into them and encouraged me to make something they could sell. I came back to the shops a year later with a South Bay wall calendar, tidebook, t-shirt and sticker. The rest is kind of history. From then I started making more calendars and t-shirts and clothing and kept progressing. I was already doing a lot of technical wetsuit design at Body Glove so making the transition to designing clothing was a natural process. I brought on my childhood friend Josh to help with the sales and marketing and now we are 5 years deep in doing Hippy Tree.

I heard the good citizens of LA first thought you guys were a gang, how’d that come about?
We were throwing around ideas at the time on how to turn HippyTree into a street art project. Andrew was getting over the whole spray paint thing and wanted to come up with a way of infiltrating the streets with the “tree” logo he created. We didn’t want to do wheat pastes or stencils. We were interested in coming up with something entirely new. We thought about bolting metal trees into walls or doing something with terracotta pots, and then one day it hit me when I saw some fishing line tangled up in a telephone wire. We went on a binge for about 6 months and hung metal trees around telephone wires from San Francisco to San Diego. It was like tossing shoes around wires but with metal trees. We hit up the South Bay so hard that the media and local newspapers started to take notice. For a while the local newspapers and news channels were thinking the metal trees were gang related… you know how those gangs roll around hanging trees.

So doin’ jail time for hanging trees huh? Sounds like the ’60s revisited. Are you one of them hippies yourself?
Everyone needs to go to jail at least once to know that you never want to go to jail again. But nah, we aren’t hippies. What’s ironic is that HippyTree stemmed from my graffiti name. We don’t wear patchouli oil or tie-dye or beads and shit like that. We’re just down to earth guys that like to surf and appreciate nature and wildlife.

Each Hippy Tree product comes with seeds for the wearer to plant, have you been getting some good feedback from that?
JOSH: The “plant seeds” project allows consumers to interact with Hippy Tree. It’s turned out to be a rad project. It took a while to figure out what seeds to use and how to package the seeds into hangtags, but after that the project worked itself out. The consumer purchases the product, plants the seeds, grows the seeds, takes a picture of his or herself sporting the product next to the plant and emails us the photo. We post the better photos on hippytree.com. It’s cool to see all the different kind of people that wear Hippy Tree. From moms and dads to people and their pets to people in different countries, it’s a very gratifying project to be part of. Check out this link to see some of the pics.

Looks like you’ve been spending time getting weird on photos out in the desert, have you been doing a lot of climbing?
ANDREW: The desert can definitely make you a little weird. I grew up hiking and backpacking a lot with my family when I was young. As I got older the hiking evolved into climbing. It was only natural to mix Hippy Tree with our involvement in the climbing culture. Surfing has always been our first passion. Hippy Tree is a surf company, always has been always will, but instead of branching out into skateboarding and snowboarding like other companies within the action sports industry, we decided to expand into a culture that related more to our interests. We aren’t into big wall climbing with ropes and a ton of gear, just like we aren’t into towing into Jaws with skis and toe ropes. We like bouldering (climbing lower elevation rocks without ropes). Bouldering is a lot like surfing where you need minimal gear and go out with your friends and push each other and have a good time.

Can you describe the high-tech Hippy Tree headquarters and what goes down during the typical day?
JOSH: The high-tech Hippy Tree headquarters is not what most people think. Some people think we drive nice cars and make big paychecks. Truth is we eat, sleep, design, pack, and ship orders out of a rental house in the South Bay. The only perk is the ocean is a couple blocks down the street and we can surf whenever the waves turn on.

Where do you see the mainstream surf industry headed in the next couple years? You think there will be an organic takeover?
ANDREW: I don’t think anyone can predict where the surf industry is headed. We try not to get too caught up in trends. We started using organic cottons and recycled papers for calendars and catalogs in 2005. There wasn’t a lot of talk about eco-friendly products and sustainability until about a year or two ago. We use sustainable materials in our manufacturing because it meshes with our appreciation for nature and the activities that we participate in. Whether the “Going Green” trend will continue… I don’t know. It never was a trend for us. We will always be manufacturing products with a sustainable direction. The challenge is it costs more to manufacture eco-friendly products. I don’t think a lot of companies are willing to sacrifice their profits for eco-friendly manufacturing. Hippy Tree is willing to do that, but like Josh mentioned earlier, we don’t drive nice cars or have a radical corporate office. We are driven by passion and the enjoyment of designing and creating interesting products. I didn’t create Hippy Tree to have a surf company and be cool, I created Hippy Tree as a platform to share my design, photography and vision with the public.

I know you guys are always driving up and down the coast delivering to shops, and I’ve seen the entire coast as well camping in my car and such. Any crazy road stories?
ANDREW: Every road trip has a story or two. We were visiting shops in Humboldt a year or two ago and decided to drive to the Oregon border. I saw a shed in this field with a forest mural painted on it. I walked out to the shed and was taking pictures of it when I got zapped in the leg by an electric fence. Luckily I was wearing pants and it didn’t get shocked too bad. I called Josh over to take a closer look and told him to touch the wire. He touched the wire with his bare hands and got knocked on his ass. One of the funniest things I have ever witnessed.

I heard there is an actual tree named ‘The Hippy Tree’. Fact or fiction?
JOSH: That is true. There is a spot in Tiburon, California, north of the Golden Gate Bridge, that the locals call Hippy Tree. On one of our trips North we checked it out. We had gotten some crappy directions off some kid on Myspace. After driving around for hours and walking over hills and forests we finally spotted a huge tree. Once you see this tree you know it is the Hippy Tree. It’s giant and sits all by itself. It has a killer rope swing and a ladder so you can get up the trunk and climb around in the tree. We asked a couple passer-bys what the tree was called and they all said Hippy Tree.

What can we expect from you guys in the coming seasons?
ANDREW: We’re on working on developing more technical cut and sew pieces, along with more conceptual graphics that mesh with our interests in nature and surfing. More pants, more board shorts, more button ups, more headwear. Hippy Tree has a definitive vision. Designing technical products that are going to work well for both surfing and climbing and overall lounging is a challenge. We’ve been working on breaking up the line into different divisions. We started branding our headwear category under the name “Hippy Helmets” when we first started making hats. Now we are working on creating names and branded hangtags and labels for other divisions. In 2010 we are introducing Hippy Tree’s Aquatic Division along with the Nomad and Hunter Division.

To learn more about Hippy Tree, visit hippytree.com.