Business Spotlight: Any Body’s Custom Design Embroidery (ABCDE)

Maxwell Louie, owner of ABCDE

ABCDE
109 Lafayette, Suite 302
abcde-embroidery.com

We’re excited to spotlight Longevity Fund grant recipient Anybody’s Custom Design Embroidery (ABCDE). Local businesses, fraternities, sororities, and anyone looking to get custom embroidery come to ABCDE for its services. A big thank you to National Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurship (National ACE) for making this Longevity Fund grant possible.

Blog by Courtney Adams, Photos by Jordan Ji

On a slightly sunnier than usual Tuesday morning on one of the first days of what New Yorkers call “Spring”, I met Max for the first time at a coffee shop. Even through the mask on his face, I could hear his thick accent suggesting that he had been a native New Yorker all his life. As we sat down at a cramped table outside, we began our interview over the bustle of traffic and other coffee shop small talk.

Let’s start with a question that many people might be wondering about. ABCDE has a pretty unique name. What’s the story behind that?

Well, it was named by my friend, we couldn’t think of a name in the beginning, so he used that name as an acronym, Anybody’s Custom Design Embroidery, so we just say ABCDE.

You mentioned your friend right there. Tell me the story behind your store.

Oh wow. It’s quite a long story, so I’ll try to keep it short. It started about 30-something years ago. 

A group of friends and I wanted to start a business, we didn’t exactly know what. The first idea was to get into check cashing places because I knew an attorney and they said that it was pretty lucrative. Then we decided that we didn’t want to put in the time, and we didn’t want to think of being shot over robberies. 

A few years ago, my friend and I took a trip out to San Francisco, and we saw this lady doing hand embroidery, and we had never seen that before. I bought a couple of shirts and gave them out, and everybody loved it. At that time, I said, “How come we don’t have that in New York?”. I picked up the yellow pages, and I found a handful of places that said that they do embroidery, so I decided to call them up, visit all of them, and maybe one or two of them out of ten had machines. I don’t know why. I decided to do some due diligence, call a distributor, take a trip out to Long Island, and I actually saw the machines, and that was always in the back of my mind, doing embroidery for teams and stuff. I was always involved in sports back in the day, and we realized that we always had to order a dozen, or two dozen [uniforms] at the time: if I had this machine, I could just make one. 

The lightbulb went off, and we said, “Hey, how about getting into embroidery?” Then we had to find a place. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the South Street Seaport back 30 years ago, it was pretty lively, and we opened our store there. We were there for about 8-19 years, and then we moved when Sandy hit, it wiped out the entire facility, and that’s when we moved to Chinatown. That time, 10-11 years ago, we didn’t even have a storefront. With the internet, we became like a fifth-floor abandoned building that nobody would know about, and then we took a spot out of a commercial building in Chinatown, third floor. I think it was a good move because it was convenient, it was right next to the train station, before work, after work, you could drop by, stop by, even on the weekends, come by, place an order, go to Little Italy, go to Chinatown to eat. That’s how we started. With the business at the time, we had six partners, and everybody said I don’t want to do this anymore, so I slowly bought out all the partners. 

Thanks for that story. You just mentioned that you were involved in sports when you were younger. Is that something that’s still important to you?

I was always involved in basketball tournaments in Chinatown. I was a local YMCA kid, and we would always travel around to different cities to play at local basketball tournaments: Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and it still goes on now. Every memorial day is a tournament, and the city is a place in the United States where everyone comes together and plays basketball. 

And you still play?

“No”, he said with a chuckle. “Not anymore”.

So moving on to more technical questions, how much does a typical job cost? 

I’d had to say it can range from eight to ten dollars on the low side or even five dollars. They can have one particular garment that can cost one hundred thirty dollars.  

And what would those particular garments be? Why would they be so expensive?

Because we do a lot of sororities or fraternity stuff. People like to put something on the chest, on the sleeve, on the hood, on the back, so that adds up.

Embroidery must be difficult work. You mentioned using machines: can you walk me through the process of embroidery from start to finish?

Sure. A simple embroidery – lets say you want to come into the store, you want to put the name “Michael” on a t-shirt, and you want to give that as a gift. So then you come in, you take a look, you select a shirt, or you have the option of bringing your own garment, take a look at different fonts, different color threads, and let’s say hypothetically, you want “Michael” to be in the script. Then we ask general questions, like “How big do you want it”, and then you say, “I want it like three inches wide”, we’ll give you a bow, and we’ll tell you to come in a day or two to come to pick it up.
Seems like a simple process?

That’s a simple one. But let’s say that you have your own business, and you’re opening up like a coffee shop, and you specifically have your own logo. You give us your own logo, we look at it, and we say “I want six aprons, and six T-shirts”, we’ll give you a bulk [order]. Another option is you can bring your own garments, or you ask us to supply them, and we’ll give you a number.

Can you tell me how COVID has affected your business? 

Obviously, we were downtown, so we got shut down like everyone else. We had some major accounts, that were like hotels, restaurants, and building management, like commercial buildings, like engineers, supervisors, and handymen, all of that got stalled, and all of the hotels were stalled so we lost all the hotel business. Restaurants, We lost hundreds of restaurant accounts. Right now, is the peak season, once it hits sixty, seventy degrees, all restaurants will start calling us for short sleeve shirts, outdoor dining, they don’t want long sleeves. I guess COVID affected everyone, but after I guess 3 months, they started to bring things back. The restaurants, the hotels, have not come back. Now, the restaurants have started to come back. Commercial buildings, they have not come back. For one reason or another, I’m not sure. We worked at a couple retail companies that sold uniforms, like nursery uniforms, doctor’s uniforms, restaurants. One of them was a major account, they have not come back. That was a huge hit for us.

Next question, how are you planning to use the Longevity Fund?

Several things. One, when I first got it submitted, I wanted to do a website, and Victoria recommended me two girls that helped out your organization. Kathy and Jessica, I actually hired them. Currently, they are building our website. I have been looking into ordering a new embroidery machine so we can be more profitable and expedite more orders in a quicker manner, and [I] probably have to get a new computer and desktop. That grant will go a long way.

What is your motivation?

Motivation? Eh, I guess the satisfaction that over the course of the years, the clients, they became more than clients, some of them are actually friends now. I think it’s just the satisfaction of giving good products to people.

I know you mentioned sports earlier. Can you tell me about yourself outside of ABCDE? Hobbies, interests?

My biggest hobby was that I used to run a lot. I ran about five marathons. I used to be a lot slimmer than I am now. That, I probably need to get back into to lose a little weight and keep healthy. I probably like to go to sporting events, baseball games, high school basketball games. 

What’s your team?

Yankees.

What are your future plans for the business?

Possibly looking to expand. My lease is coming to an end at the end of this year. Talked to the landlord, there is some vacancy in the same building, but not sure yet. That’s on the horizon, looking to expand our business. 

Those were all the questions I had. Thank you for your time.

After our interview. Max looked me in the eye and shook my hand. We talked about sports, California, and the different New York boroughs. As he left the interview and began walking on the street to return to work, I was taken aback by his confidence and steadfastness. His demeanor suggested someone that had lived a life’s journey that was full and vibrant, and his eloquent stories supported that assessment. Come visit Max at ABCDE for his signature embroideries at 109 Lafayette Street, Suite 302.

Chinatown establishments like ABCDE are what makes the spirit of our neighborhood. We need your support now more than ever to keep that spirit alive. Together, we can preserve Chinatown businesses and ensure Chinatown will always be open for business. To support Chinatown organizations like ABCDE, donate to the Longevity Fund here:

Photo credit: Jordan Ji