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IN 1981 JIN Sook and Do Won “Don” Chang emigrated from South Korea to Los Angeles in pursuit of every entrepreneur’s greatest aspiration: The American Dream.
The husband-and-wife duo, both 26 at the time, landed in California penniless, speaking broken English, and without college degrees.
They were determined to strike it rich in the coffee industry, but it wasn’t the cash cow they’d envisioned.
For three years, Don worked as a janitor, pumped gas, and served coffee to make ends meet. Then, a simple observation sparked a monumental shift in their direction, which would eventually make them billionaires.
“I noticed the people who drove the nicest cars were all in the garment business,” Don told the LA Times in a 2010 interview.
This realization led them to open a 900-square-foot clothing store in LA in 1984. They called it Fashion 21.
Unlike the three failed businesses that had previously occupied the space, they raked in $700,000 in sales in the first year.
After this initial success, they began opening new stores every six months and eventually changed the name to Forever 21.
Today, the fast-fashion retailer brings in roughly $4.4 billion in sales from over 600 stores, and the Changs have an estimated net worth of $6.1 billion, according to Forbes.
Forever 21 remains a family business, with Don serving as CEO and Jin Sook as chief merchandising officer. Their two daughters also play an integral role in the company. The elder, Linda, manages marketing, while Esther oversees the brand’s visual elements.
“It’s important my daughters learn from the hard work my wife and I put into this company,” Don told the LA Times. “Who better to look out for your best interests than family?”
Their daughters aren’t the only ones drawing inspiration from their rags-to-riches story.
“Forever 21 gives hope to people who come here with almost nothing,” Don told the LA Times. ”And that is a reward that humbles me: The fact that immigrants coming to America, much like I did, can come into a Forever 21 and know that all of this was started by a simple Korean immigrant with a dream.”
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Rest in Peace..
With no disrespect to the deceased or his family, garda forensic team only need to see the video… Brush up and open the road….its obvious to a blind man what happened. RIP
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With no disrespect to the deceased, he could have killed someone else, absolutely shocking driving down the fast lane of a motorway in the wrong direction
It was obviously a mistake.
@Shane McGrath: was it? I’d find it hard to believe that he could make that same mistake for so long he seemed to be going down the motorway for a long time nevermind all the signs Saying do not enter when entering the On ramp if it was a 20 year old young lad who did the same there wouldn’t be this kind of sympathy.
@James: This happened to me before on the M9. Met an elderly man driving towards us while we were in the ‘over taking/ fast lane’ – thankfully we noticed it in time and there was nothing on our inside so that we managed to avoid the man. It was terrifying, rang the guards and alls they could say was ‘Yes we are aware of that’.
RIP to the poor man.
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That can quite easily happen anyone especially on that part of the road, the brutal signage and the maze of roundabouts on the slip roads is atrocious. There is very often roadworks that regularly has you driving in the other side too.
I nearly got caught out coming out McDonalds last year late at night when signs from roadworks that had finished were not removed.
@Da Dell: they drove by plenty of cars heading the other direction and should have pulled into the hard shoulder of it was a mistake, horrible anyway for everyone involved
Terrible for the mans family but it’s happening too often on that road.
Twice I’ve been driving to Dublin in the outside lane and you see a dot coming towards you …it takes seconds to realise its a car on the wrong side of the Motorway and you move in pretty quickly and hope anyone behind you see’s the car.It’s usually an elderly man on his own to be honest
The woman in the red car got out pretty quickly after the crash
@silveryD: I genuinely don’t know how she managed to get out of the car that quickly it definitely saved her life thats for sure.
For the frequency that this happens , as we do seem to see rarely byt enough to come up with something. and seeing all the cars trying to warn people on the opposite side of the road, we should come up with some universal warning like , if someone holds their horn down this means to tell the other side of the road to pull in.
@Roisin Brennan: the thing is, once you realise where do you go?
Wonder if this man’s doctor gave him okay recently to have licence. Obviously he had some form of dementia.
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