To supplement the low demand for bespoke suits, Meiko Tailor diversified into made-to-measure services, offering a selection of ready-made suit sets that customers could buy off the racks.
“I saw how hard my parents worked [to keep the business afloat] – to the extent that we would sometimes hear them fighting. Even at 12 midnight, they were still sewing, still cutting,” Adele recounted.
“We went through a lot of losses, but my parents never uttered a single thing to my brother and I,” she continued. For the siblings, life went on as normal. “We had meals on the table every day and a roof over our heads.”
‘NOT A KAMPUNG TAILOR’
Witnessing first-hand the struggles her parents faced both in tailoring and running a business, Adele confessed that “it never, never, never crossed my mind to take over the family business.”
In fact, there was no pressure from her parents to do so. “They always told us to do whatever we wanted in life – as long as it was a dream we wanted to pursue and something that made us happy.”
It was an innocent question from Adele’s young niece that changed her perspective. “At five years old, during a family lunch, she asked her grandfather, ‘Gong gong, how many customers did you have today?’” Adele recalled. “I asked her why she asked that, and she said, ‘Because I seldom see gong gong at home.’”