He still cuts it
Edward Kwan, 80, tailor
He has been running Wai Cheong Tailors for more than six decades, but to this day, he cannot even sew a straight line. This is because Kwan is usually in charge of measuring customers and then cutting the fabric into patterns for a seamstress to piece together.
“When a garment does not come out right, most customers blame the tailor for not sewing it properly. But really, sometimes they should blame the person who cut it. A good suit is 60% cutting and 40% good sewing,” Kwan says.
His store sells mainly business suits priced from S$850 (RM2,054). It has been at the Shangri-la Hotel Singapore since 1977.
Clients are mostly hotel guests, including former United States president Bill Clinton in the 1990s, whom he describes as a nice but quiet man.
Kwan’s wife, 76-year-old Grace Leong, takes care of the accounts at their workshop and office at Peninsula Plaza, while he works at their shop in the hotel.
“I always tell her to retire but she wants to help me. After all, we can still work and it is better than staying at home with nothing to do,” he says. They have one shop assistant and three seamstresses.
He took over the business after completing secondary school. His father, who started it in the 1930s, was killed during the Japanese Occupation. At the time, the store, which is named after his father, was located in a shophouse in North Bridge Road.
After the war, Kwan learnt the trade through trial and error with the help of his mother and the professional tailors she hired. “If you cut the cloth wrongly, you just had to start again,” he recalls.
While things were tough, the business became lucrative enough for him to get married and start a family. He met Grace in church in the 1950s and they moved into a bungalow in East Sussex Lane, where they still live.
They have five children, none of whom have shown any interest in taking over the family business. Their eldest daughter is in her 50s, while the youngest is in her 40s.
Kwan says: “I am very blessed. I did not have to struggle and scrape very much because I have a little business.”
Lately, he has been telling himself to take things easier. Enough is enough, he adds. The important thing is to earn sufficient money to pay his workers and the rent.
Still, he will not be letting go of the business just yet. “I am the boss, who is going to tell me to retire?”