Tomoaki ‘Nigo’ Nagao sets up A Bathing Ape shop on Melrose Avenue

In the center of the room is a glass, terrarium-like pod. Inside that pod are Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, movie producer Joel Silver and artist Takashi Murakami posing for a supernova of flashbulbs. In the middle of the celebrity scrum is an unassuming 37-year-old sporting a trucker cap, a hoodie and a mouthful of platinum and diamonds.

It may sound like a Madame Tussauds exhibit, but it was actually the scene at A Bathing Ape’s new Melrose Avenue outpost Wednesday night, and it was anything but your run-of-the-mill assortment of desperate C-listers seeking swag bags.

What caused the surreal celebrity constellation to coalesce in the center of the room? The same man who put the stacks of candy-colored clothes tantalizingly close but just out of reach in floor-to-ceiling glass cabinets, and the man for whom the long line of well-wishers and hangers-on snakes down Melrose. The man who melded Japanese streetwear influences with such American pop culture icons as the “Planet of the Apes” movies, Winnie-the-Pooh, SpongeBob SquarePants and the DC Comics superheroes.

His name is A Bathing Ape’s and his business model is the stuff of marketing legend. By directly owning all 24 stores, refusing to wholesale and producing extremely limited runs of merchandise (from less than a dozen of one jacket style to a few hundred of a particular T-shirt) that appear on the tastemakers and influencers of the MTV generation, Nigo has created a business model that has customers going ape for $80 T’s and $230 brightly colored sneakers, Winnie-the-Pooh-like bears covered with swirly camouflage colors into a global lifestyle brand on track to do $70 million in sales in 2008.

In an interview at the 8001 Melrose Ave. store earlier this week, Nigo (through a translator) claimed that the limited production runs began when he launched the company 14 years ago and simply couldn’t afford to make more than a few hundred pieces at a time. “Now people don’t want to be wearing the same thing as everyone else,” he said.

It’s a kind of serendipitous success story that one has a hard time swallowing whole – especially after spending a few minutes with him and seeing how conscious he is about controlling every facet of his – and by extension the brand’s – image.

Preparing for a newspaper photographer, he doffs a Billionaire Boys Club trucker cap (he and Williams are partners in that brand) and dons a BAPE cap. He wriggles into a red hooded sweat shirt embroidered with bamboo-noshing pandas, and adds a heart-shaped diamond stud the size of a molar to each ear. He plops himself down on the BAPE camouflage carpet, flips up his hood and stares balefully into the camera. Between shots he switches his position ever so slightly, jeweled watch showing in one shot, a blinged-out N.E.R.D. belt buckle (N.E.R.D. is Williams’ hip-hop group) in the next.

Thirteen minutes into the interview, just as Nigo is explaining that his visit to Los Angeles will include a trip to Nokia Theatre to see West and Williams perform, Williams himself strolls into the store to welcome his pal and business partner.

“It’s no secret that I take a lot of my creative encouragement from him,” Williams said. “He’s my mentor.” The two first met through Jacob the Jeweler about five years go and their friendship took off when Nigo hosted Williams in his studio for a recording session in Japan.

“When we were there he took us to his showroom and said that we could have whatever we wanted. There were samples there that weren’t coming out for like another eight months. When I came back to the states with that stuff it was … ” Williams feigned open-mouthed hysteria, waving his hands in the air. “Fresssssssssh!”

Nigo’s penchant for Americana is almost as legendary as his marketing acumen, and on past trips to Los Angeles he’s searched out Eames furniture (his favorite L.A. find was a Charles Eames molded plywood chair with a heart-shaped cutout) and after the store opens he’s paying his first visit to the temple of off-kilter Americana known as Las Vegas.

“I want to see as many Cirque du Soleil shows as I can,” he said.

But chances are he’ll be hard pressed to find a more entertaining circus than the cavalcade of celebrities crammed into the 2,500-square-foot shop last night: Mike Tyson standing near the back like a bewildered bull in a china shop, Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz lurking near a rack of T-shirts, and Murakami sporting a blinged-out dollar-sign necklace, A Bathing Ape striped T-shirt and zippered sweat shirt and a Louis Vuitton headband.

“I think the U.S. market is ready for something fresh,” Murakami said. “They’re ready for some pop.” With that the artist popped up the stairs into the flashbulbs to pose with his friend.

adam.tschorn@latimes.com