Urban Legends

On a September afternoon in the sunny 10th-floor Downtown Crossing apartment he shares with his wife and business partner, Dina, Karmaloop founder and CEO Greg Selkoe sits stroking a massive cat, sending clouds of Siamese fur into the air. He is dressed self-consciously hip, if a little like a high schooler, in spotless gray and navy suede New Balance sneakers, dark jeans, and a pink cotton T-shirt silkscreened with black and yellow bananas; his deeply dimpled cheeks and china-blue eyes suggest a jowly former teen heartthrob, a baby-faced James Spader. The only evidence of the gaudiness that often accompanies rapid moneymaking is the pair of gargantuan white sunglasses he’ll sport later in the elevator on his way outside. Now, though, as he lounges with Dina on their leather couch and describes the rocket-ship trajectory of their venture, he’s calm and candid, giving off an effortless and somehow not unappealing cooler-than-you vibe.

In less than 10 years after its modest, and unlikely, launch from the depths of his parents’ house, Selkoe’s Karmaloop has grown to become the largest online streetwear retailer in the world. It is currently the 1,500th most visited website in America and the 7,000th worldwide, racking up more than 1.5 million unique visitors each month, and enjoying so much visibility with its target audience that 60 percent of its traffic is “direct load,” meaning those visitors arrive at the website by typing the name directly into their browser rather than blindly Googling their way to it. Revenues have increased at least 100 percent each year, as the company has repeatedly crushed its competition, most of which is based in more artistically inclined urban locales like New York, L.A., and Tokyo. Last year Karmaloop was nominated for best retail site at the Webby Awards, considered the Oscars of the Internet. It has dozens of celebrity fans, including, from various walks of fame, Kanye West, Pink, Tommy Lee, and the Celtics’ own Kevin Garnett.

“Before the Internet, you would never have a fashion business located in Boston. But we’re killing it,” Selkoe says, pointing to projected sales of $20 million (up from $8 million in 2006) by the time the books are closed this year. “We’re the biggest pure, true streetwear retailer both on- and offline. No one even comes close in terms of the traffic we get.”

If it all sounds a little crazy, that’s because it sort of is.

Go on to the next page...