“We could be the Latino FUBU,” predicts Salas, 31, referring to the New York-based makers of oversized football jerseys, sweatshirts and other “urban street” gear that pulled in an estimated $350 million in sales last year.

Salas and Peña, co-founders of Suavecito’s at 725 Santa Fe Drive, have created Chingaso street, gym and boxing apparel. “Chingaso” is Chicano slang with a flexible, sometimes profane, definition; Salas and Peña say they intend it to mean “fight.”

This week, a cutting-edge Manhattan boutique called YRB (Yellow Rat Bastard) will begin selling Chingaso wear in the store and online. It’s just the kind of crucial hype that a new line needs to break into a cutthroat and fickle market whose volume retail analysts estimate at $5 billion.

“We can do it,” said Peña, 38. “We know we can. If we get the right amount of investment, we can be competing at a national level next year.”

The two hope to raise anywhere from $1 million to $4 million from private investors to help launch the line nationally.

Chingaso is the only Latino-oriented line currently carried by YRB, which offers such brands as Puma, Porn Star, Fila and Ecko Red. YRB says it hopes Chingaso will generate more West Coast sales through the YRB Internet site. Salas and Peña also offer the line at its own Web site: www.chingaso.com

For the most part, urban street wear so far has translated into success for such black entrepreneurs/rappers as Russell Simmons and P. Diddy, as well as such powerhouses as Tommy Hilfiger and DKNY. Chingaso is one of the few urban street wear lines that is attempting to woo customers via unfiltered Chicano street culture, Salas and Peña contend. Other urban designers such as Tribal Gear, co-founded by a Latino, often use elements of Chicano street and lowrider style. “Urban wear doesn’t mean black or Latino or Asian,” said David Ishay who is publisher of the YRB magazine and catalogue.

“It means all those things, because in city life, all those influences are mixed into one. I can’t really say why any Hispanic-oriented line hasn’t made it big yet. This is such a business that depends on the right timing and publicity, along with a solid game plan,” Ishay said.

If demographics are indication, the timing is ripe for lines like Chingaso to make it big. The fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population is 18- to 24-year-old Hispanics, the bulk of whom are second- and third-generation Americans. More than 60 percent of those Latinos are of Mexican descent.

Those 5 million young Latinos also represent one of the most affluent, most educated slices of the booming Hispanic population.

Salas and Peña said they are working hard to generate the right publicity. They proudly point out that they turned down music-industry mogul Tommy Mottola’s invitation to help create Kmart’s new line of Latino apparel in order to concentrate their efforts on Chingaso.

One part of the Chingaso line, boxing apparel, is aimed at creating hype among an influential group of urban Latino tastemakers: Professional prizefighters. Salas and Peña say they have approached a number of top fighters who tentatively have agreed to wear Chingaso gear.

“How could a Latino boxer not want to wear something that has the word ‘fight’ on it?” Salas said.

They also have approached prominent businessmen such as Al Gallegos, the Albuquerque-based founder of Z-CoiL Footwear Inc. Gallegos made a fortune by inventing and patenting the “spring shoe” — tennis and hiking shoes that have a spring-like coil in the heel.

They haven’t approached Hickenlooper, who gets his suits made at Suavecito’s. The mayor has spoken highly about Peña and Salas on various occasions.

“He pimps us all the time to a crowd of people that probably wouldn’t know about us. We are grateful,” Peña said.