DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT: SUE WONG

In the business world, it is not uncommon for a CEO to be described as a ball of fire, someone who is high energy and dynamic ˆ traits so necessary for success. Fashion designer and CEO Sue Wong is a ball of fire that has been able to blend her relentless energy with creativity, organization and humanity. Today she remains the same optimistic and generous person I met nearly 20 years ago when she was just embarking on what is now a multimillion-dollar corporate success story.

Long before Sue Wong was born in rural communist
China in 1949, her father Wing Wong had already decided that he would find a way to bring his future family to the United States for a better life. Because he was forced to escape first, he had to leave his then-pregnant wife behind. Sue spent her first five years growing up in rural China with her mother. Later, the two of them also escaped, first to Guangzhou and finally to Hong Kong where she completed her initial formal education. Sue did not meet her father until September 1955 when she and her mother immigrated to Los Angeles.  

 As a youngster, Sue wanted to pursue a career in fine art as a painter. Although she was awarded a prestigious scholarship to California Institute of the Arts after high school, a career in the fine arts was not an endeavor supported by her traditional Chinese parents. In light of their courageous escape and new career options in the United States, they hoped she would become an accountant or teacher, or have some other „stable job.  Ironically, her younger brother would become an accountant and work within Sue’s company, and her son Ezra is studying to be a painter at Yale University.

This fashion designer and businesswoman was never formally trained in her industry. Within a month of enrolling in a fashion program at Los Angeles Trade Technical College, she was awarded a scholarship from Arpeja, a hip fashion company for younger women. After her classes she would spend three hours every afternoon sketching for the lead designer, and in less than a year she decided to trade in her education for a full-time job as a designer in Arpeja‚s sportswear division.

The following year her courage and innovative sense compelled her to leave and open two of her own one-of-a-kind boutiques in Venice and Hollywood. Her unique designs, which typically combined selected embellishments such as lace, handwork or beading from vintage clothing of the ‚20s, ‚30s and ‚40s, attracted patrons like Goldie Hawn, Victoria Principal and Bianca Jagger. Sue was already earning a healthy, avant garde reputation among celebrities that was quickly spreading beyond Southern California.

 By 1972 Sue Wong designs were receiving national, critical acclaim. She affiliated with Malibu Media, and the once-fledgling company achieved competitive status with Sue on board. Serendipitously, one of Sue‚s designs was copied by Arpeja and rapidly sold more than 300,000 units. Not surprisingly, she became the lead designer at Arpeja, taking the company‚s sales from $3 million to $51 million in three short years. She achieved international acclaim as her designs sold 800,000 to 900,000 units, and it was clear that she had become one of the highest-paid and sought-after designers in America.  

By 1979 Sue found herself at a crossroads as she tried to reorganize her life during a challenging divorce. She decided to leave Arpeja start her own company, Sue Wong Inc.   Since her talents are mainly in design, she realized that she lacked the appropriate business skills to keep it afloat, and she lost everything within a year. During the following five years she made several attempts to partner with other businesses, but the exchange of her talents for holdings within these companies never seemed to be appropriate.  

In 1984 she became a lead designer for First Glance, eventually buying the division and using her label. Out of sheer tenacity she started a second Sue Wong Inc. When Sue spoke with me about her business, she drew a triangle in the air in front of her face, and she said she was concerned with creativity and production, marketing and business.  After Sue, her husband and business partner Dieter Raabe is the second element of a triumvirate. He handles all of the financial aspects of the business. They have been partners since 1985, and they are content and grateful for each other‚s talents. Four years later Sue increased her company‚s visibility by opening a showroom in the Garment District in downtown Los Angeles and hired Joanie Graham-Pepper, the third element of the triumvirate. As the head of national marketing, Graham-Pepper brought with her more than 30 years of fashion industry sales experience to the corporation. With these responsibilities clearly delineated and refined, the corporation‚s production increased dramatically, and Sue moved her factory overseas to accommodate demand.

Sue remains the creative force within the corporation, and she still does the original drawings for her designs. They are translated into working drawings that are „read‰ and utilized by her pattern makers. A prototype of each garment is made in muslin, and the patterns are refined. Fabrics and accoutrements like beads, sequins, buttons, facings, cutwork and embroidery are selected in tandem with the cut of the garment. After the garment is refined, perfected and approved by Sue, explicit instructions are delivered to her production staff in China. The garments are manufactured in Guangzhou (ironically, not far from her childhood neighborhood), Shantou and Shanghai, as is all of the labor-intensive handwork for which her homeland is well known. Then they are shipped back to the United States for inspection and delivery to vendors such as Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Macy‚s, Bloomingdale‚s, Bendel‚s, Lord and Taylor, and Saks Fifth Avenue.

 In 1999 Sue created an evening-wear division, Sue Wong Nocturne, in time for the millenium. The success of this new division has boosted Sue Wong Inc. sales to more than $18 million. Sue‚s tenaciousness and ability to take appropriate risks have fueled her success. She produces approximately 150 designs each season. The ideas for her designs come directly from the history of fashion, including inspirations from the 1890s and every decade from the ‚20s through the ‚70s. She realizes that the key to healthy marketing is diversity, but in spite of this her clothing is consistently romantic, blending time-honored handwork and exquisite craftsmanship with classic, rather than trendy, designs. Her lines target a style-conscious market that includes women between 25 and 55. Graham-Pepper suggests that women who buy Sue Wong designs are those who want to make a statement about all that is „eternally feminine with a heightened sense of style and timeless elegance. When I asked Graham-Pepper if her marketing expertise influenced Sue‚s designs, she insisted that she informed Sue of trends, but nothing interfered with her creativity. 

 When I visited Sue Wong, this small, attractive woman wore a black, cotton, short-sleeved tunic with below-the-knee matching leggings and black, chunky clogs. Her hair was black, too, cut just below her ears and slicked back behind them. She wore no make-up but red lipstick and no jewelry but a beautifully set, custom-designed and elegant diamond ring. She was understated and no-nonsense. She appears, as she remains, true to herself, direct, confident, courageous, wise and full of energy ˆ truly a ball of fire. When asked if she would collaborate with us on an exhibition, she enthusiastically responded, „Oh really? Yes! Wonderful! I have never had an exhibition before! Let‚s do it!


http://www.suewong.com