Sam McBride is the Brand Manager of The Mad Hueys. For our recent story on the Hueys Swellnet asked Sam a bunch of questions, however not all of them could make the cut.

Here's the interview in its entiriety:

Where’d the name Mad Hueys come from? It sounds more like a band or a club.
So as mates the founders always used to call each other Hu or Huey when they saw each other, then they entered a fishing comp and had to name their team. They were like, 'well, we are the maddest fishos here' so they came up with The Mad Hueys and so it began! So yeah, you could say it started as a mini team that has expanded into a club of sorts.

Are The Mad Hueys aware of their “bogans on board” perception from some quarters of the surf community?
Totally aware. 

What's The Mad Hueys's response to that?
We’re happy to embrace it. As a nation we tend to use the term bogan to classify a big chunk of the Australian public where we would probably say that those bogans are just working class Australians. We definitley aren't ashamed of our working class background. We all still work full time doing trades etcetera, so we would still classify ourselves as working class and if other people want to label that as bogan then we aren't too worried about it.

One of the main aspects of the Hueys that we have always tried to stick to is that this is an all inclusive club. If other people want to attach labels to us, the people that we hang out with, or fans of the Mad Hueys then that doesn't bother us in the slightest. There’s always going to be people who don't like us or some of the things we do and if they want to use the word bogan to try to put us down then there is nothing that we can do about that. At the end of the day we are just having fun with our mates who just happen to be from all walks of life. We can't believe how far this whole thing has come and we are grateful for every minute of it. 

Reckon there's a chance the Huey brand will mature the same way Quiksilver have? Remembering Quik once said: “If you can't rock 'n roll don't fucken come”.
The brand has probably already started to mature to some extent. We are all getting older and have families of our own so we are mindful that there's probably some stuff that we did in the past that we wouldn't do anymore. We aren’t ashamed of ourselves but we'd also like to build a brand that we can be proud of.

Having said that though we don't ever think that we will be a PC brand. We obviously don't have a board that we have to answer to and we like having a hell time and our videos reflect that. We all grew up looking at brands like the Volcom’s etcetera where the team was having a hell time and the marketing was a bit more loose than it is now and we feel like surfing has lost that raw edge lately. We aren't trying to throw rocks at the other brands though. We understand why they market their products the way that they do and that’s totally up to them, we just like to do things a little differently. We think that people who are fans of the brand probably find that lack of filter refreshing to some extent, so it's not something that we will be changing up any time soon. Sure, there’s going to be people who would prefer their brand ambassadors to be well spoken and a little more polished, but there's plenty of other surf brands that cater to them.

For us, whatever evolution that happens at the brand over time, you can guarantee will be an honest and authentic one true to our culture and roots we have been lucky enough to set. It will always be about 'the good life' and having fun, however that manifests.

Would The Mad Hueys take the same approach to overseas surf destinations, where it could be riskier, by offending cultures?
We always try to be mindful of the local culture whenever we travel. Sure there are people who are going to dispute that based on the videos that they see online, but the videos don't always tell the whole story. We never intentionally set out to disrespect any person or the culture of any particular country that we travel to though. We never get together and try to dream up ways that we can piss people off, but we aren't perfect and sometimes we do dumb shit that people are going to find disrespectful. We always try to own our mistakes when we make them though and apologise where it is warranted, but you can't please everyone all of the time and we probably do slip up more than most. 

The Mad Hueys signature shoey”is now an Australian icon being seen with Jack Miller’s first MotoGP win and is now a common event at major motorsports events here in Australia and on the World scene. Did you ever think the act of drinking beer out of a shoe would ever become so big?
We are so stoked that people are as pumped to do shoeys as we are! Yeah it’s dirty, but it's something that we think has become recognisably Australian, and we are all for it. It has probably caught on because it is so ridiculous. There's obviously no need to drink out of your shoe but it's all just for a laugh. If you see someone drinking out of their shoe, whether it be someone at a party down the street, or Daniel Ricciardo on the podium, you know immediately that that person likes to enjoy themselves and that's a definite tick in our books.

Celebrities are sent clothing and products from consumer brands all the time. Why do you think they choose to wear The Mad Hueys gear and further post it to their personal social media pages? [Thinking here about people such as Brody Jenner, Nick Cummins and Karl Stefanovic]
That's probably a better question for those specific people, but we think that they probably wear it because they're either mates with us already or they see what we are all about in the videos and they identify with us. They enjoy living the good life too so they want to wear some of our gear. The coolest thing is that when these guys do wear it, there seems to be an obvious honest affection and pride in being part of the club.

Is The Mad Hueys business growing?
Fuck yeah. We aren't millionaires or anything like some people think, but the brand is growing really well. We are trying to grow it sustainably though. We are in this for a good time and a long time. We still want to be around in ten years doing our thing and we have a good plan to do exactly that.

What do you think of the other major apparel brands in the industry?
For the most part we have nothing but love for the other apparel brands. We never went into this thing with any specific intentions. We never wanted to come in and disrupt anyone's existing business. We were and still are just a bunch of good mates who like fishing, surfing and flairing up and a brand grew out of that.

A heap of our friends work for other apparel companies, and that's great. We are happy that they can work in this industry too because we all love what we do and the industry get togethers are always a very fun time. Sure we are probably in a different stage of our evolution to a lot of the other companies and we occupy a different sector of the market but we are fine with that, and they probably are too.

Read the article on The Mad Hueys