Who

"The Ralph Lauren of hip hop," Ecko is an urban entrepreneur and owner of a multi-million dollar fashion empire.

Backstory

Marc Milecofsky grew up in Lakewood, N.J—his father was a pharmacist, his mother a real estate agent—and acquired the nickname Echo before he was even born. His mom, pregnant with her daughter Marci, was told during a scan that the baby's heartbeat had an echo—which turned out to be Marci's twin, Marc. As a teen Milecofsky used "Ecko" as his graffiti tag and also started charging his classmates to airbrush designs on their jackets and shirts. He went on to study pharmacy at Rutgers, but dropped out to concentrate on developing a fledgling clothing company in partnership with Marci and fellow Lakewood resident Seth Gerszberg. ''We spent the next six years losing $6 million,'' says Gerszberg. But in 1998, on the brink of declaring bankruptcy, they gave the business one last push: They borrowed more money, created the rhino logo—a play on Polo's horse and Lacoste's crocodile—hired new designers, took out ads in The Source and Vibe—and sales of Marc Ecko Unltd's baggy streetwear shot up to $36 million, with particularly brisk trade in Federated-owned stores like Macy's and Bloomingdales.

Ecko's companies now generate annual sales of over $1 billion and include 12 different apparel and accessories lines, including the original Marc Ecko Unltd, Ecko Red Kids, a higher-end label called Cut & Sew, 50 Cent's clothing line G-Unit, skateboard brand Zoo York and utility apparel line Avirex, all of which you'll soon be able to acquire with greater ease, as the company says they plan to go from 38 to 150 retail stores across the country by the end of 2009. There are also several entertainment and publishing ventures in his portfolio. A men's magazine, Complex, debuted in 2002; in February 2006, Ecko Entertainment launched Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, a video game in which graffiti artists tag a fictional city of the future called New Radius, and currently in development is a game based on Showtime's series about a forensic scientist/serial killer, Dexter.

For the record

In 2006 Ecko filed a first amendment lawsuit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Councilman Peter Vallone and the City of New York, challenging anti-graffiti legislation that made it a criminal offense for anyone under the age of 21 to be found in possession of spray paint or broadtipped marker pens—and succeeded in a getting a judge to block the enforcement of the amendment. Another skillful attention-grabbing antic was Ecko's September 2007 winning auction bid of $752,467 for Barry Bonds' record-breaking 756th home run baseball. Ecko had the public vote on what he should do with the ball, and it ended up being sent to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but marked with an asterisk to indicate Bonds' suspected steroid use.

Pet cause

Ecko's company supports the North American Save the Rhinos Campaign, in tribute to his company's logo. In October 2006, he went as far as to purchase a baby rhinoceros named Jack from a game farm for $8,500 in order to prevent the animal from being sold to a "canned hunt" range.

Personal

Ecko and his college-sweetheart wife Allison live in Bernardsville, New Jersey with their son Alexander and daughter Sage.