ICONS · All
NIGO
4 documented moments across BAPE & NIGO-adjacent history.
2025
11
Milestone · HUMAN MADE
HUMAN MADE IPOs on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
HUMAN MADE lists on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market. Oversubscribed 60x. Opens up 13%. The first streetwear IPO in history, a blueprint for BAPE's eventual path to the public markets.
2011
Milestone · BAPE
NIGO sells BAPE to I.T
NIGO sells 90% of BAPE to Hong Kong retailer I.T for roughly USD 2.8 million. The stated reason is overexpansion: BAPE had grown faster than its scarcity could sustain. The lesson becomes the founding thesis of HUMAN MADE one year earlier.
2010
Milestone · HUMAN MADE
HUMAN MADE launches
A year before selling BAPE, NIGO launches HUMAN MADE. Vintage Americana, disciplined releases, no volume-chasing. The brand he wishes he had built from the start. Fifteen years later it IPOs.
1999
Collaboration · BAPE
NIGO x Pharrell first meet
NIGO and Pharrell Williams meet in Tokyo. The friendship seeds a decade of BAPE collaborations and, four years later, Billionaire Boys Club. Two designers with the same taste for restrained loud — camo, cartoon logos, Japanese restraint, American hip-hop energy — who would rewrite what streetwear could be.