BY MICHAEL POWER
SEWING THE SUPPLY CHAIN
COLLABORATION IS KEY IN KATHY CHENG’S LIFE AND BUSINESS It was from her father, Chak Cheng, that Kathy Cheng learned the meaning of grit. When the family first came to Canada, the Hong Kong native had to work three jobs. By day, Chak was a cutter for an apparel manufacturer. He also worked as a server in a restaurant on weekends while delivering pizza at night. In the 1980s, after the Cheng family arrived, Google Maps didn’t exist. There were no smartphones to help navigate deliveries. Chak relied on maps or map books to navigate his new city. Cheng’s mother worked as a seamstress. They spoke Cantonese as their first language. The couple had worked in the apparel industry while living in Hong Kong. Their daughter eventually became partners with her father in the family business, RW & Co., a garment manufacturer he founded with his brother and sister in 1988, originally called Wing Sun Garments. She is also founder and president of Redwood Classics Apparel, their wholesale and stock premium program. Cheng started helping in the family business at age 12. She performed tasks like tax remittances, some basic accounting, quality assurance and trimming. 10 FEBRUARY 2022
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“Every summer pretty much, if I wasn’t able to find a job outside of the factory, my summer job was at the factory,” Cheng says. Cheng attended the University of Toronto. She considers herself a hands-on learner, and graduated from the school’s co-op management program, now the Bachelor of Business Administration program. She then attended George Brown College’s post-graduate program for sports and event management. “I’ve always loved managing events,” she says. “From the outside it looks easy and smooth, but on the inside, you realize there are all these nooks and crannies that bring a successful event to life.” The program led to a job in Taipei, Taiwan. For about a year. Cheng ran a Canadian education expo for international students. When she returned to Canada, she worked at a financial consulting company called Brendan Wood International doing data entry. She moved quickly into project management, working to publish institutional equities reports. But the financial industry was demanding. The position paid well, but long hours meant Cheng rarely saw her family.
A NEW DIRECTION Cheng joined the family business in 2000. For the next several years, she worked to learn the trade, helping as best she could. In 2008, when the financial crisis hit, the business faced a decision: continue as is or get into another field, as most North American textile makers had done? As the company grappled with these decisions, Cheng’s father asked her to become his business partner. She hesitated, unsure of whether that was the direction she wanted for her professional life. That time, around 2008, was the height of the fast-fashion era. Consumers wanted cheap clothes. They cared little for quality, what products were made from or how long they lasted. But the family business was built on values quite opposite to those the garment industry pursued at the time. It was around this time, as the family pondered its next business move, that Cheng recalls standing on the factory floor and suddenly grasping the direction her career would go. “I realized that I’ve had such an incredible life because of the factory, because of our makers,” she says. “Many of them had been with us for 10 or 15 years by that time. They literally watched me grow up. It was my ‘a-ha!’ moment where I said, ‘I’ve got to do this.’ Shortly after, my dad and I became business partners, in 2009, January.” The company restructured with 40 people, focusing on collaborating with their brand partners. Since then, it has tripled its workspace and head count. Yet the values remain the same: quality products, flexibility and collaboration. During the restructuring, Cheng went from vice-president to president, and around 2010 developed Redwood Classics Apparel, the company’s wholesale program. The program started as a cut-and-sew manufacturer but eventually expanded its backend value chain, offering a commissioned, local knitting service. The company brings in yarn by the container and then does custom knitting. Reflecting on that period, Cheng is grateful she witnessed how local manufacturing and employment opportunities uplift communities. Many of the company’s employees were immigrants who had brought their skills with them when they immigrated from Hong Kong, a forSUPPLY PROFESSIONAL
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MIKE FORD PHOTOGRAPHY
“This whole time my father and his brother and sister had continued to scale our manufacturing business,” Cheng says. “We’ve always been making in Canada, since 1988. He asked me, ‘if you’re working this hard for someone else, would you consider helping out in the family business?’”
