On April 1, 1993, Nigo and later Undercover founder Dun Takahashi collaborated to open a shop called Nowhere in Harajuku, Tokyo, which can be understood as the predecessor of Bape. In addition to selling clothing designed by Nigo and Takahashi Shield, the store also makes cameo appearances selling their friends' brands, such as 40% Against Rights, the predecessor of Nishiyama Wtaps.
In November 1993, Nigo, with the help of Shinichiro Nakamura, officially established BAPE based on apes and camouflage, full name A Bathing Ape in Lukewarm Water. The Ape Man logo was designed by Nakamura. For the first two years, Nigo mainly sold some T-shirts, producing 50 pieces each, 30 for friends, and a small number of them went to the market. This act is over-interpreted as Nigo only for fun, not to make money. In fact, this is just a common trick adopted by the tide brand at the beginning of its establishment to avoid taking excessive risks. For example, the now indispensable Off-White was officially established after Virgil Abloh successfully tested the waters of Pyrex Vision.
After successfully shaping the brand image and accumulating a certain prestige, Nigo began to expand the scale of production, opened a large number of branches, as of 1998 BAPE has 40 branches in Japan, the positioning of Bape during this time is an ordinary street brand, no limit, no speculation. The turning point was also in 1998, when Japan quickly set off a BAPE boom as Takuya Kimura wore BAPE in an advertisement. Nigo realized the business opportunity, and he closed all 39 stores except Tokyo, once again playing hungry marketing. Soon, there was a long queue in The shops in Riharajuku, and bape's trendy brand image was established.
However, at that time, THE INFLUENCE OF BAPE was still limited to Japan and Hong Kong, and the real achievement of BAPE's world-class fashion brand status was the opening of stores in New York and Los Angeles in 2000 and the opening of stores in London in 2002, so that BAPE officially entered the European and American markets. During this period, Takuya Kimura, the most popular Japanese drama in history in 2001, "Hero", wore "Leather Down Jacket" to push BAPE to unprecedented heights.
At this time, BAPE is only one representative classic that is representative enough to ascend to the altar. Finally, in 2004, The Camo Shark Full-Zip Hoodie, designed by Shinichiro Nakamura based on the Shark's Mouth Spray Paint Fighter, was unveiled. At that time, the offer price of about 2000RMB had been speculated to 13000+ RMB by 2005. Subsequent generations of camouflage sharks were also speculated to varying degrees, and AT THIS TIME BAPE entered its heyday. Unfortunately, after 2005, in addition to the reproduction of the shark is to replace the shark with a tiger and a panda, there is no attractive design.