Bobby Kim spent more than two decades insisting that a product is never just a product. At The Hundreds, the LA-born streetwear label he co-founded in 2003, T-shirts and hoodies are delivery systems for community, emotion and a shared sense of belonging. Now, Kim is bringing that philosophy to the largest consumer-products machine in the world, as Disney Consumer Products’s (DCP) newly appointed global creative director — a role that has never existed at the company before.
The largest licenser in the world, with $62 billion in sales, DCP sells products in 180 countries across 100 categories, and activates at all levels of the market — from taking over Selfridges for the holiday season and collaborating with Balmain, Givenchy, Gucci and Coperni, to selling $36 Minnie Mouse pajamas at Old Navy and $4 Lilo Stitch socks at Walmart.
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For the global retail division of The Walt Disney Company, Kim’s hire is both a shift in strategy and a signal of bigger ambitions as fashion-as-merch accelerates.
“A lot of consumers are now coming into the Disney ecosystem through the DCP businesses, whether that be gaming or fashion collaborations, beauty or large retail experiences. We are becoming a key part of the company’s creative engine, and we needed to make sure that we had talent in-house that provided creative horsepower,” DCP president Tasia Filippatos says of Kim’s role to inject more “indie” spirit into the House of Mouse, oversee creative teams globally for all licensed and Disney Store product, bring in new collaborators and storytelling angles, and serve as the face of DCP at fashion weeks and events.
Kim’s appointment formalizes something Disney has been experimenting with already, bringing cultural operators inside the tent to reshape how its IP lives. Kim’s mandate is deliberately fluid. Reporting to Marcus Rosie, Disney’s global head of creative, he’s been told, in essence, to build a lab, bring in outside designers, and pursue projects big and small, from mass retail to obscure passion plays. The company also added two Nike executives to its team to meet this goal: Ron Faris, who led digital innovation and all things gaming at the footwear giant, and Lauren Gallo-Rodriguez, who shaped numerous celebrity, influencer and athlete marketing campaigns.
Kim, the uber-connected collaborator and bestselling author of This Is Not a T-Shirt, whose Instagram is chock-full of recent encounters with cultural movers and shakers from Travis Scott to KidSuper, is here for all of it. At the DCP offices in Glendale, California, during his first formal interview since being hired in March 2025 as VP of creative, and elevated to global creative director effective Thursday, Kim speaks about tackling Disney’s image problem, tapping into fringe characters and the vintage market, and why Walmart is just as important as the Paris runway.
“These people are the master class of storytellers,” Kim says of Disney’s creative ranks. “I’m here to learn from them more than the other way around. Everything here is literally led by a film franchise, a beloved character, a TV series — and then downstream, we make merchandise and products out of it.”
Community through characters
Kim’s career has been defined by flipping that downstream logic on its head, however. In streetwear, a graphic tee can communicate a worldview, a collaboration can rewrite cultural hierarchies, and scarcity can turn a humble sweatshirt into a status symbol.
What makes his arrival at Disney particularly timely is a broader shift in how consumers relate to objects. “People are looking at product differently now,” Kim says. “Product is the story. There are inherent narratives in the way it is designed and built. You don’t necessarily need a movie for a product to be popular. In some ways, the product can be where the story starts — and then downstream, maybe a movie comes out of it.”
He points to the Labubu, a cult character born, not from a studio franchise, but from artist Kasing Lung’s imagination. The product came first, the lore followed and a film from Sony is next. At Disney, Kim sees echoes of that phenomenon in Stitch, the mischievous alien who debuted in a 2002 animated film, but has since taken on a life far beyond it. Stitch, Kim notes, is now a multi-billion-dollar business, particularly resonant with Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers — many of whom loved the character years apart from the original film and its 2025 live-action remake.
“Stitch shows up in fashion, in Nalgene bottles and phone cases. They want more and more Stitch. That says a lot about how identity, entertainment and lifestyle have merged,” he says. “Product used to be the souvenir — you went to the concert and left with the band tee. Now, people go to the concert for the band tee.”
The development feels natural to someone who built his career in streetwear, which Kim describes as “people over product”. That emphasis on the human element is central to how he’s approaching Disney — a company that can appear more like a monolith than a collective of creators.
“I’ll be honest,” Kim says, “from the outside perspective, Disney feels corporate. But once you’re here, you realize this place is rife with fandom. It’s all built on community. Every day it’s Comic Con.”
Disney Consumer Products works with hundreds of licensees worldwide, a scale that could easily flatten creativity. Kim sees it differently. “At The Hundreds, we did 30 or 40 collaborations and thought of ourselves as masters of relationships. Here, it’s hundreds of relationships and friendships. If there was ever a king of collaboration, it’s Disney.”
Kim is drawn not just to Disney’s bestselling blockbuster franchises, but to what he calls its “B characters”— the obscure, emotionally resonant figures that thrive in subculture. Asia, he notes, has long understood and loved them. Walk through a Disney Store in Tokyo or Shanghai and you’ll find characters like Bianca, the mouse from 1977’s The Rescuers, or Lucifer, the cat from Cinderella, elevated into entire product universes, untethered from their original narratives.
“There’s something about looking under the rock and finding these universes no one else has thought about,” Kim says. “Being the first to share them, to proselytize them — that’s always been my mindset.” This applies to his outlook for his design teams, too. “We cannot only be inspired by the trends. We have the opportunity and the ability to drive trends because of the weight of this company and because of the weight of these brands,” he adds.
Key collaborators
Making Disney product archives more accessible to fans and designers is also part of the plan. “Vintage Disney is a universe in itself — the collectibles market, not just in terms of T-shirts, but watches and all types of product that people’s entire identities are built around,” he tells me. “There are key figures within the community. So much of that feels very familiar and native to me from a streetwear point of view.”
An outsider approach also informs how Kim thinks about Disney’s biggest icon as the company approaches Mickey Mouse’s 2028 centennial. Mickey is a squeaky-clean universal logo. But younger consumers gravitate toward characters who feel imperfect, emotional, even a little angsty.
“In the old cartoons, Mickey would scream, he’d get mad, he’d express emotion,” Kim says. “That’s how people want to feel today. I want Mickey not just to be an icon, but to be a friend — and maybe even a guide. Someone who helps you navigate uncertainty.”
Fashion and beauty, at every level, will be a key tool in reframing Disney stories and characters. Kim will be involved in all Disney’s high-end collaborations, but he’s quick to reject the idea that luxury is the only cultural driver. “A Walmart is no less important than a Coperni,” he says. “They play equal roles in the ecosystem. Disney’s about meeting people where they are.”
Sports, music and gaming are growth areas for blending content, commerce and experience. Disney’s recent Formula One collaboration unveiled at the Grand Prix in Las Vegas in November — complete with Mickey and Minnie Mouse, alongside fireworks at the Bellagio fountain — was an early test case. F1, with its elite aura and tribal fandoms, can be intimidating. Disney, Kim says, is the neutral ground. “Everyone can agree on Mickey Mouse,” he says. “We need that more than ever.” A second Disney x F1 collection will drop in the spring.
Underlying it all is Kim’s desire to re-center artists at a moment when technology could soon blur authorship altogether. (In late 2025, The Walt Disney Company announced a landmark agreement to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and license 200 characters for use in the AI company’s Sora video-generation tool and app.) That’s why it’s imperative to celebrate and elevate the company’s lineage of artists — illustrators, designers and storytellers, including Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks and Mary Blair — whose names and faces deserve amplification and add value and heritage to the company. “My goal is to remind people this is a creative-driven, artist-driven company,” Kim says.
It’s ambitious, but he seems energized. Kim’s workdays move from The Simpsons to Marvel to projects he can’t yet disclose, with his creative input spanning product and content. Even the corporate grind has its surreal perks: after one tedious finance meeting at Disney World’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park in Florida, Kim found himself FaceTiming his family as a giraffe wandered by his hotel window.
“No matter how bad the day gets, we’re arguing about the shape of Mickey’s ears. I get paid to imagine all day,” he says. “It’s a sandbox.”
For a founder who built a streetwear brand by treating T-shirts like manifestos, Disney might be his biggest — and most consequential — canvas yet. “The romance of Disney is appealing to people right now. I’m getting artists, world-famous DJs, creative directors, founders of brands and fashion designers that are all knocking on my door, saying, ‘Hey, what’s it like over there?’” Kim says. “There’s something about the social climate that’s just so fraught with anxiety, but Disney symbolizes and represents that happiness and joy and sanctuary.”
