15 Years in a Timeline, a Guilty Confession, and Finally Creating My “New to Raw Denim” Series
“How did you start your journey with Denimhunters?” That’s not a made-up hypothetical question; someone actually asked me this recently.
If one person asks it, there are probably a thousand others who’ve wondered the same thing and never bothered. I decided it was time to finally write down the answer.
Denimhunters turns fifteen this year. And I have a big birthday coming up—one that ends with a zero (and begins with a four). It felt like a good moment to share the full story.
Fifteen years is a long time to do anything. Long enough to make plenty of mistakes, rebuild more than once, and eventually—finally—get to a place where the site is actually the thing, not the side thing.
In This Issue of the DH Weekly
This issue is about the origin story of Denimhunters—fifteen years told through a set of “why” questions, part of the New to Raw Denim series. Plus a full timeline of the site, the guilty-side-project years, and some of what led me to even start the site.
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The DH Weekly is my Friday column on raw denim and heritage menswear. If you found this through the New to Raw Denim series, this is where the conversation continues.
Denimhunters Timeline: Fifteen Years, In Order
This issue is about the story behind the site. What follows is the full timeline, with the parts that didn’t make it into the origin story in the series.
2011 (January 30) – Denimhunters launches in Danish, because there’s nowhere in Danish for people who want to understand raw denim.
2012 – The site grows from a personal project into something bigger, with contributors and the first signs that it could become more than just me writing about jeans.
2013 – Denimhunters has a booth at Bread & Butter in Berlin—twice—literally placing the site alongside Clutch Magazine, Men’s File, and Heritage Post. On my honeymoon in the US, I get a private tour of the Levi’s archive in San Francisco with Lynn Downey.
2014 – Things get more ambitious, with partners involved and a drop-shipping webshop that never quite becomes the business I hoped it would.
2015 – The partnership ends. I keep the name and the domain, lose most of the content with traffic, and rebuild the version of Denimhunters you’re reading now.
2016 (May) – Blue Blooded is published by Gestalten, turning my early years of research, retail experience, and denim obsession into my first book.
2017 – The Denimhunters Academy launches as a paid video course. It teaches me plenty, but it doesn’t become the business I’d hoped for either.
2018 – I focus on Instagram, including the Blue Blooded Instagrammers Q&A-series.
2019 – The Denim & Boots Podcast launches in April. Bryan Szabo’s first article appears in the autumn. In the winter, the Blue Blooded Portfolio series becomes the last project that follows the site’s old logic: good stories, strong content, no obvious business plan.
2020 – I launch The Denimhunters Podcast, build my Denim Encyclopedia, and Bryan and I begin working on what becomes the Well-Made Essentials.
2021 – During COVID, I take a full-time job in another industry after practically giving up on Denimhunters ever becoming the thing I could do for a living. It results in an existential crisis, and I nearly hand over control of the site. I quit that job in April, 2022.
2022 (October) – The Rebel’s Wardrobe is published, growing out of the Well-Made Essentials work Bryan and I had been building together.
2023 – Bryan and I create and publish the Rebel’s Outfit special issue of Heritage Post, which proves more commercially successful than the book itself. I also start working on what becomes my own brand, Weirloom.
2024 – My decade-long BESTSELLER consulting work ends. Freelancing work continues, but the old safety net changes, and Denimhunters has to earn real money.
2025 – I launch Weirloom, while Denimhunters starts generating real revenue more consistently through buying guides and affiliate income.
2026 – Fifteen years in, Denimhunters is closer than ever to standing on its own.
The full story covers all of this in more depth—including the “why” behind each decision, the partnerships that went wrong, the years when the site nearly disappeared, and what any of it has to do with growing up in a part of Denmark with wide open spaces and very low ceilings.
The Guilty Part
For the longest time, running Denimhunters felt like something I did on the side. Not in the entrepreneurial, aspirational sense—but in the feeling-super-guilty-about-it sense.
It was the thing I did when I was supposed to be doing something else. The work I’d open when I had a deadline. The tab I’d switch to when my concentration drifted. It was fun. It was also procrastination. And those two were entirely compatible.
Something shifted in 2025. The site finally started generating real money—consistently, for the first time. I’d set a goal for the year, and I beat it by way more than I expected. The revenue has found a new plateau since, and I’m still getting used to the feeling that this is now my actual work.
This year has been about doing the things I’ve been putting off. My guide to the best denim brands and the one about Japanese denim brands—I don’t think anything like it exists elsewhere. My shop guide series. And now my New to Raw Denim series, which I’ve wanted to build for years and finally did.
Before There Was Denimhunters …
If you watched The Sopranos—maybe more than once, like me—you’ll remember A.J., Tony’s son. He never quite fits the mould; he’s restless and doesn’t know what he wants—except what he’s got isn’t it.
That was me. The other kids were into soccer and mopeds. I played guitar, skateboarded, and was drawn as much to the gear and the clothes as to actually doing either. I was shy and introverted. I blush easily—my friends called me “Red,” and it wasn’t only because of my hair.
In 2008, during my bachelor’s in Aarhus, I got a part-time job at [ei’kon]—the leading menswear store in the city, carrying A.P.C., Edwin, and even the first Indigofera collection. Per Olsen, the store manager, brought me to trade shows. Tommy Rasmussen, the owner, became a mentor—one of the first people I called when I started Weirloom.
In the summer of 2010, I graduated and moved to Copenhagen. I spent a year as a buyer and deputy manager of a Samsøe & Samsøe shop, reading From Cowboys to Catwalk in every spare moment, half-dreaming of writing something like it. It was there that I first went to Bread & Butter in Berlin—and that’s when I launched Denimhunters.
The Full Series Is Already Live
I wrote the story about the site first. It felt like the natural beginning—the “why” before the “what.” But once I had it, I realised it couldn’t go first in the actual series.
If you’re new here, you don’t know me yet—and if you don’t know me, the story of how I got here probably doesn’t mean all that much. So the practical guides needed to go first in the series. But here, for the DH Weekly, it makes more sense to lead with the story.
For the rest of July, I’ll be publishing Weeklies about the other parts, with some context around each of them. But if you’d rather not wait, the whole series is already live.
If something in this story surprised you, or if the format doesn’t work for you, I’d love your feedback.
The post I Wrote My Story, Then Built the One Thing This Site Was Missing appeared first on Denimhunters.
DENIM and PATCHES sourced this post originally published on this site