I just want to give a big shout out to The Giant Peach on their 10 year anniversary today!
Check out the website from 2000, courtesy the Wayback Machine.
Karen over at The Peach just reminded me we launched the website on May 25th, 2000 — 10 years to the day. That’s crazy. I remember coding and designing the website for the launch from my old Orianna Street apartment in Philadelphia before moving first to San Francisco and later to Oakland to help directly with the website.
I first met Karen Dere when she became the merch goddess at Hieroglyphics.com in the late nineties.
In 1999, she had this crazy idea to spin off a new site that would focus on producing and distributing merchandise with the hiphop groups we personally knew. It would be a personalized experience for both the artists and the customer. This venture, she told me, would be called The Giant Peach: Because when you step inside, all your troubles disappear.
Karen asked that I design and help run this new site. Bet. I coded the site up and we launched 10 years ago today.
Of course, I need to give shouts to the groups we originally launched with and whom in many instances The Peach continue to have relations with: Quannum, Stones Throw, Ledisi, ABB Records, HipHop Slam, Definitive Jux, Live Human, Future Primitive. Karen, you done good.
I went digging in the crates and found a few pictures from the old, old, OOOOLD Giant Peach warehouse in South San Francisco from July 2001. Check em out:
In 2001, the office was modest. Present day, The Giant Peach occupies a giant warehouse in Alamdea, CA.
[Above and below] The warehouse section of The Giant Peach in 2001
[Above] Paints for the screen printing application.
Above, the print carousel in the foreground where the clothing is arranged for screen printing.
From humble beginnings… 🙂
The Giant Peach website as it appears today:
All grown’id up and doing big thangs!!
Congrats on ten amazing years in online hiphop and beyond, Peachies. Ya’ll are kicking much ass.