Nigo’s international expansion is just starting. At Bape’s new locations in London, Hong Kong, and Taipei, the lines around the block—all people waiting to buy merchandise—are even longer than those in Japan. When the first U.S. store opened, in New York’s Soho neighborhood in late 2004, long queues formed for the first several days the shop was open. Customers line up because Bape product is scarce, an intended consequence of Nigo’s decision to manufacture as few as a dozen of certain items and rarely more than 300 of any one garment or sneaker model. Bape is distributed exclusively through its own stores, which explains the thriving piracy of its products. The company estimates that as much as 90 percent of so-called Bape merchandise for sale online is counterfeit. If nothing else, that suggests Nigo’s talk about doubling his sales is realistic.

Despite Nigo’s strategy of tightly controlled product, curatorial brand management, and unique retail environments, the company is growing faster than he would like. "Our goal has been steady, regular growth. Ten percent a year is manageable," he says. Bape revenue in 2006, however, grew 40 percent, from $42 million to $59 million, Feltwell says. (By comparison, rival streetwear brand Stussy’s revenue from apparel sales was $35 million last year.) Those gaudy growth numbers have been fueled by the new stores, including two more in Japan, giving Bape a total of 22 stores worldwide. In addition, he is introducing the Billionaire Boys Club fashion line—jointly owned by Nigo; Pharrell Williams, the three-time Grammy-winning music producer (and Esquire’s best-dressed man in the world in 2005); and Williams’ manager, Rob Walker. "He just doesn’t have cold moments," Williams says of Nigo, "and he's having a very hot moment right now."

Nigo is contemplating whether he should exploit this heat—in an industry where lukewarm is the same as dead—to become big and finally show all those haters in Tokyo. “He can go two ways,” says Davena Mok, director of A-Vibe, a youth-consulting firm. “One: get superbig and sell out and finally open his hotel and all that. Or two: put all his millions behind him and go back underground. Standing still is not an option. Japanese kids are getting over him, so he knows the international market is where he has to go.”

"Can something big ever really be cool?” Nigo asks rhetorically when I meet him again a few days later at his house, a five-story, gray-concrete-and-steel bunker just a few blocks from the Bape offices. When Nigo opens his 15-foot-high, green-glass-and-steel front door, I am again reminded of the striking contrast between the short, phlegmatic Japanese man standing before me and the flashy brand that he has created. But then Nigo smiles—a thin-lipped grin accompanied by a slight dip of the head—revealing teeth encrusted with platinum and diamonds. Think of the bling that smile reveals, the sudden glint as shocking as finding a maggot in your steak, as a metaphor for the man: Hello Kitty meets gangsta rap, with an M.B.A. geek in the shadows.

His employees say that until very recently, Nigo had as good a handle on inventory as did the store managers themselves. “Bape is still his store,” says Skate Thing, whose real name is Shinichiro Nakamura. He’s one of Bape’s chief designers and has been a friend and collaborator of Nigo’s since Nigo was 18. “It’s hard for him to let go of that,” Skate Thing says. “But at some point, this is bigger than even Nigo.”

Just how big the brand can get came up frequently when Nigo met with investment bankers in 2005. When handbag maker Samantha Thavasa went public and achieved a market cap of $1.5 billion shortly thereafter, Nigo says bankers told him that he could expect Bape, which has more global upside, to receive a similarly healthy reception on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

"There really is no other company like Bape," says Akira Miura, who covers the fashion business for WWD Japan. "He has this condensed trademark that can be diluted and turned into a great business." Nigo insists, however, that he has no intention of going public in the near future. "But it’s tempting," he says. "Think of what I could do with that kind of capital."