A janitor and a hairdresser opened a tiny LA clothing store with $11,000 in 1984; 31 years later, Forever 21 made them worth $5.9 billion

Do Won Chang and his wife Jin Sook reached the United States in 1981 with very little money. Today they run Forever 21, a fast fashion brand with 790 stores in 48 countries and $4.4 billion in sales. Forbes ranks them No. 222 among the richest Americans, with a combined net worth of $3 billion. But their story did not start with a big idea. It started with long, tiring days.

The story of Do Won and Jin Sook Chang

South Korea was passing through a difficult time. Martial law had been lifted that year, after the assassination of military ruler Park Chung-hee. Do Won says people were not living well and opportunities were few. He had wanted to go to America since the sixth grade, when his parents visited the country and came back with stories.

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He was 22 when they left, and Jin Sook was 25. Friends had introduced them, which is still common in Korea. They met with the clear purpose of marriage, and Do Won felt that having a partner would make life in a strange country easier.


On the way, they stopped in Hawaii for less than a day to get green cards for themselves and Do Won’s parents. They reached Los Angeles on a Saturday, where his sister lived. By Monday morning, Do Won was washing dishes and preparing food in a coffee shop kitchen for about $3 an hour. It was not enough. So he took up eight more hours at a gas station, and then started a small office cleaning business that kept him busy until midnight. Jin Sook worked as a hairdresser, a skill she had learnt back home.

Learning the trade before taking the risk

At the gas station, Do Won noticed something small. The men from the garment industry drove the nicest cars. He asked them what work they did, and that curiosity led him to a job in a clothing store. He treated it as if it were his own business, and his boss liked him for it.

After three years in America, the couple had saved $11,000. In 1984 they opened Fashion 21, a 900-square-foot shop in the garment district near downtown Los Angeles. The earlier owner, who also sold clothes there, made only around $30,000 a year. The Changs made $700,000 in their first year. Their method was to buy wholesale close-outs, meaning stock taken directly from manufacturers at heavily reduced prices.

The shop did so well that they began opening a new store every six months. That slow, steady expansion is how Forever 21 began.

Today the company employs 43,000 people, nearly 11,000 of them full-time. During the 2008 recession, Do Won says he used the strong cash flow of his private company to open more stores, aiming to create 7,000 jobs within a year. He says he reached that target. He also says he wanted to pay forward what America had given him.

The recent picture is not so smooth. Online retailers are giving tough competition, and fewer people are visiting malls. The company has closed or downsized some larger stores, and its 2015 sales were flat compared to the year before. There were also reports that it paid some vendors late, and that a shipping company cancelled an exclusive contract covering 171 stores, saying its business from Forever 21 had dropped by nearly 50%.

Do Won accepts that the garment business is not easy right now, but insists that business is doing well. He says the company has been preparing for e-commerce for some time, and that its aggressive international expansion caused some struggle that it is ready to overcome this year.

When asked what the American Dream means, his answer had little to do with money. To him, it is about a better life, and family comes first. If the business runs well but the family is broken, he does not call that success. The business is still a family one.

His two Ivy League-educated daughters, Linda and Esther, and some nieces work in the company. Do Won and Jin Sook, both devout Christians, still go to early morning prayer at a local church almost every day.