The story
Ascot Chang left his hometown, Fenghua, at age fourteen to apprentice under a master shirtmaker in Shanghai. In 1949, he left for Hong Kong where he started taking orders for custom made shirts. Knocking on door after door, he visited the offices of Shanghainese businessmen who were unable to find high quality shirts in Hong Kong.
By 1953, Ascot Chang opened his first 600 square feet (56 m2) store at 34 Kimberley Road. He opened his first branch at the Peninsula Hotel in 1963, which is still open to this day.
In 1967, with sales negatively impacted by the Hong Kong 1967 leftist riots, Ascot Chang went on his first trunk show: over three months, he visited twenty cities in the United States, including San Francisco, Boston, and New York City.
When Ascot Chang suffered a heart attack in the 1970s, his son, Tony Chang, and his brother, Johnny Chang, started leading the company. Under the second generation of Changs, Ascot Chang spread worldwide, with their first international store opening in New York in 1986.
Currently, Ascot Chang has 15 locations across China, Hong Kong, the United States, and the Philippines.
From Wikipedia’s article on Ascot Chang, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3