Top Hat: Three Key Steps to Building a Winning Product
Entrepreneur Will Biondo ’26 has spent a long time looking for a breakout product.
He’s a clothes guy, so in high school, he sold T-shirts. Initially, that didn’t go well, as the manufacturer messed up the first order. After that, Biondo printed the design on the shirts himself.
When he came to Babson, he first sold button-up shirts, which weren’t decent sellers, and then hoodies, which were. “I started seeing people wear my hoodies on campus,” he says. “The word was around.” Then he pursued yet another product when he discovered spoon rings, a unique piece of jewelry made from the handle of a spoon.
While some of these efforts were hits, and others misses, Biondo didn’t land on a true breakout product until he started selling colorful crochet hats last year. Crochet may be a vintage, old-fashioned look—“The style is granny,” Biondo says—but his hats caught the eye of a popular online influencer and propelled his clothing brand, Arkyve (pronounced “archive”), to higher sales and prominence.
This year, Arkyve’s Instagram page jumped from 3,000 followers to more than 50,000, with the venture earning nearly $400,000 in sales to date. Business trips have taken Biondo to Atlanta for a streetwear event, to Japan for a meeting with a high-profile stylist, and to France for Paris Fashion Week.
Reflecting on his entrepreneurial journey, Biondo identifies three key factors that helped him not only find a breakout product but also capitalize on it once he did. “This is the best product I’ve ever made,” he says. “It is a crazy design that is intricate, and people like colorful things. It’s a unique hat.”
Learning an Essential Skill
One key factor that enabled Biondo to grow Arkyve is that he can sew. “My whole business started with sewing,” he says.
Sewing allows him to be creative, and it gives him control. Whenever he has a new idea for a product, he doesn’t need to wait for a manufacturer to make it for him. He can do it himself. “I didn’t want to rely on others to make my clothes,” he says.
He first took sewing lessons in high school. That wasn’t easy. “When I started, I was the worst in the class.” But Biondo kept at it. He liked to take clothes apart and see how they were put together. Later, he worked at a thrift store filled with secondhand fabric, which he used to make his own pieces. “Sew. Sew. Sew,” he says. “That was the only thing on my mind.”
He makes his hats out of crochet blankets, which he cuts into shapes and sews together. At first, he made all the hats himself. He would settle in at the Weissman Foundry and crank them out. “Everyone would stare at me. I would have stacks of hats with me,” he says. “I was making as many hats as I possibly could.”
Eventually, the demand grew too big for Biondo to keep up with. Earlier this year, he sold 1,000 hats in one day. “I cried at the sight of that,” he says. “I never expected it.” Nowadays, a manufacturer in Pakistan makes the hats.
Connecting with Influencers
To grow Arkyve, Biondo also sought to connect with online influencers. One who has been particularly helpful to Biondo’s brand is Kai Cenat, a popular streamer who has 13 million followers on Twitch and almost 10 million on YouTube.
At first, Biondo sent Cenat one of his hoodies, but while the influencer opened the package live on his stream, his interaction with the product didn’t go much further. “He opened it and said he liked it, but he didn’t wear it,” Biondo says. “Most influencers, when you send them stuff, they don’t wear it.”
Biondo tried again, sending Cenat a few of his hats late last year. This time, the influencer not only opened the hats during a stream, but he also praised them and wore one. Biondo remembers seeing the clip for the first time. “It was one of the most amazing things that ever happened to me,” he says. “I’ve watched it hundreds of times.”
Since then, the streamer has worn the hat on other occasions, including at festivities for the NBA All-Star Game. Biondo’s sales shot up, as did his number of Instagram followers. “He was giving me so much publicity,” says Biondo, who utilized Facebook ads to build on that publicity and make sure that potential customers knew that he had made the hat the prominent streamer was wearing.
Creating Community
The third key to growing Arkyve is that Biondo is often online. At his busiest, he might be on his phone nine or 10 hours a day.
Those online hours, though, are spent with purpose. He is looking for influencers he should connect with, or for trends he should follow.
“This is the best product I’ve ever made. It is a crazy design that is intricate, and people like colorful things. It’s a unique hat.”
Will Biondo ’26, founder of clothing brand Arkyve
More than that, Biondo spends his time online creating a community. He engages with followers, and he always responds to people. “I love talking with everyone,” he says. “The customer experience is very important. They want to feel like they’re part of the brand, and they want to feel connected to you.”
Those connections are critical. As of now, Biondo’s crochet hat makes up 90 percent of Arkyve’s sales. It’s a winning product, but Biondo wants to diversify his offerings. He plans to release a line of clothes soon. “You need emotional attachment to get sales,” he says. “You need to build community, a community that will support you thick and thin.”
Posted in Entrepreneurial Leadership
