(FORTUNE Magazine) – APPAREL E-RETAILER hq: London, New York founded: 1998 sales: N.A. employees: 215 privately held address: www.boo.com

It's worth noting that the investment banker at J.P. Morgan who decided to back boo.com's private equity offering is married to a woman who organizes circus competitions. Other bankers might have found boo's founders a bit, well, strange. Swedes Ernst Malmsten, a 28-year-old 6-foot-5 version of Elvis Costello, and Kajsa Leander, a 28-year-old blonde who used to model in New York, look more London night club than Wall Street boardroom or Silicon Valley geek. Stranger even than their look was their plan--to create a global e-commerce site to sell athletic clothing and shoes to people who don't sweat.

Leander and Malmsten were thinking really big: They would offer fashions here and in Europe from dozens of international companies, including the North Face, Adidas, and Puma, and niche labels like Vans and Cosmic Girl that have cult followings but are hard to find in chain stores. Boo.com would serve six countries from offices in London, New York, Stockholm, and Munich. It would have distribution centers in the U.S. and in Germany to handle the free shipping and free returns. The site would operate in five languages (including British and U.S. versions of English), accept each country's currency, and figure each country's tax. The whole thing would be built in less than six months.

And would require plenty of money; J.P. Morgan helped get it, by linking boo.com with backers including Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH; Alessandro Benetton, son of Benetton CEO Luciano Benetton; and high-tech investors like Boston's Bain Capital. It's rumored that boo.com raised close to $100 million.

Today the offices, distribution centers, and 200-odd employees are in place, right on time; boo.com is set to go live on June 21. Malmsten and Leander expect to move their merchandise by riding a fashion trend. With top companies like Prada and Donna Karan launching sport lines, athletic wear is the hottest urban streetwear. Such clothing has a built-in e-commerce advantage--it usually comes in small, medium, and large.

Visitors to boo.com will be able to search for products by color, brand, sport, price, and style. The site has 3-D--you'll be able to rotate that new Royal Elastic shoe on your screen. For advice, you can query Miss boo, an animated personal stylist that will tell you which sneakers club kids in Berlin favor (a British fashion writer scripts the advice). If you need to know something specific--say, which North Face jacket is right for trekking in Nepal in May--you can phone a customer rep; boo.com has four teams worldwide.

A groovy Website to sell groovy clothes to groovy people isn't an original idea. What sets boo.com apart is that Leander and Malmsten have gone in big and persuaded major suppliers to come along. "The first one or two players can carve up a market," says John Jordan, director of e-commerce research at Ernst & Young. Suppliers will have their own pages on the site to control their image. And all goods will be sold at full price, to appease the vendors' traditional retailers. Customers will get loyalty points good for discounts on future purchases.

Boo.com's challenge will be to stay as hip as its customers. After the U.S. and European sites go up, boo.com plans to launch in Asia. A site for kids ages 11 to 15 is planned for fall. Writers at BOOMagazine are chronicling street trends in Germany. And one employee, a cool hunter, is gathering data on street tribes--he'll use what he learns to create companions for Miss boo.

--Lauren Goldstein