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Contact Information
How We Got Started
The Team
Love from the Press

Contact Information

Hobocans LLC
236 Newark Avenue, Suite 14
Jersey City, New Jersey 07302
1 877 420 8770
store@hobohookah.com
Note: our warehouse is in San Diego, CA

How We Got Started

From: Mike Williams, Co-Founder

The HoboHookah started out of desperation - for a better hookah.

It was 2006, Trent and I were good friends, and we had already shared two college experiences:

  • We both had lived and worked in Cairo where hookah is a common part of the social life (whereas we go have a beer after work here in the US, folks in Egypt often go have tea and/or shisha). For both of us, this time spent seeing the real Middle East was a life-altering and perspective-expanding experience.
  • Given our love for hookah, it was only natural that we incorporated them into the (glorious) road trips and parties we orchestrated during college. These experiences showed us just how unfit hookahs were for the party pioneer lifestyle of traveling and partying.

We spent a lot of Sundays talking about how there had to be a better way. Hookahs were just way too cool, far too delicious to be hindered by their cumbersome sizes and weights, bulky carrying boxes, and break-ability.

It calminated in the Fall of 2006 when, during his move to New York, Trent's metal Egyptian hookah ended the journey in 2 pieces. It was on a downtrodden Saturday afternoon shortly thereafter that he made his realization:

A Bombay Saphire bottle would make an incredibly beautiful hookah vase.

And thus the idea was born.

We spent the next year playing with designs, complete with a drill press in the kitchen (and a landlord accusation of drug production), and in the Fall of 2007 we released the first iteration of the HoboHookah.

We like it quite a bit, and so did our customers: they took it over 14,000 feet up a mountain, down to Antarctica, through the Amazon Rainforest, and, all told, across all 7 continents of this beautiful planet we live on. Not bad for 2 guys separated by 12 time zones and trying to hold down "real" jobs.

By 2009 we had added our 3rd partner, Dave, to the mix and also released our 2nd model, the HoboNargile ("nar-GEE-lay"). Not only was it a step up from the original design, but it was cheaper, too.

In 2011 we revisited the flagship product and re-released the HoboHookah. Since the name is a little easier to pronounce, spell, and remember, we decided this was the best product to take to a mainstream scale.

We've got what we think are some interesting plans, so we'll revisit the HoboNargile again in the future as the dust settles. Hint: why shouldn't we try to design a hookah that could survive a fall through the Earth's atmosphere on its way back from space?

As we carry out our days here at the HoboHQ, our work is guided by one goal:

To create hookah products fit for the party pioneer: easy to use, pretty to look at, and really hard to break.

So far, we think we're on the right track.

The Team

Mike Williams, Head Hero
Contact: mike.williams@hobocans.com

Mike oversees day to day operations and keeps this train running full steam. He's also the guy you'll probably talk to when you work up the courage to call the HoboHQ.

Dave Berk, Wholesale Hero
Contact: dave.berk@hobocans.com

Dave joined this party bus in 2008 to help us expand the Dream across the globe. He develops and manages our wholesale and retail partnerships here and abroad.

Trent Krupp, Product Pioneer
Contact: trent.krupp@hobocans.com

Trent is the resident product conception guru. With his meandering mind and creative skills, he's our go-to guy for scheming new approaches to age old problems.

Love from the Press

Featured on NBC New York:

View more videos at: http://www.nbcnewyork.com.

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