Meison CEO and Westlake resident Steven Wang grew up watching his parents, Eddie and Ming Wang, build a business out of their two-bedroom apartment in Queens, New York, that they shared with another family. After emigrating from Taiwan and attending the Fashion Institute of Technology, the husband-and-wife team started a women’s apparel line, Ming Wang.
With Ming acting as the sole designer and Eddie promoting the business by going door-to-door to different stores on 7th Avenue, the two started producing knitwear products out of the apartment and slowly created a name for themselves in the industry. Steven looks back fondly remembering the hustle years of the late ’70s and early ’80s that established the current company, Meison: a group of brands valued at $45 million that will celebrate 39 years in business this year. Now, the company is forging into the future by embracing initiatives like influencer collaborations to celebrate its loyal customer base.
Meison, which moved its operations to Grapevine in 2006, furthered its investment in the local area by opening a lavish 15,000 square-foot showroom in Southlake in 2020. Operating out of passion for building upon his family’s legacy, successfully running a second-generation business and looking toward the future, Steven says Meison has always been an important part of life. His parents’ work even shaped some of his earliest memories.
“As early as the age of 3, this is all I remember them doing,” Steven says.
Eddie and Ming moved the family and the company to South Florida in 1986. Steven and his younger brother Eric spent their free time after school and over summers helping with Ming Wang. After graduating high school and studying accounting and finance at the University of Michigan, Steven ventured on his own path. But in the early 2000s, Steven moved home and started to help out.
“One project led to another,” Steven explained. “I kept saying, ‘I will leave after this.’ But then I thought, ‘I think I can add value to the organization.’ That was 22 years ago, and here we are.”
Eddie and Ming said in a joint statement they felt fortunate Steven decided to join the business, but were cautious, knowing how challenging the work could be.
“He said he saw a bright future for the company and that being part of the business would allow him to stay closer to us as a family. That meant so much to us, and his enthusiasm and commitment gave us new confidence in the future of the business,” Eddie and Ming Wang said.
Steven never expected to hold the family business’ reins, but he's grateful to contribute to the legacy.
“I lucked into it,” Steven says. “I won the genetic lottery. My dad never pushed this on me, but I feel like it was always a dream of his for us to take on something they built.”
Steven’s brother Eric joined the business soon after, which Eddie and Ming said felt like a natural addition. Eric now acts as Meison’s president and director of administration.
“Seeing Steven’s passion and the progress he had made with the business helped inspire Eric to contribute as well. While their roles are different, knowing that both of our sons care about the family legacy and want to be part of it in their own ways is something we cherish deeply,” Eddie and Ming said.
Kris Tamburello
Building Out The Business
After Steven joined Meison, Eddie urged Steven to first learn how to sell the products, saying no one would respect him if he couldn’t. So Steven moved back to New York and became a company salesperson.
After finding success in sales, Steven realized there were other business priorities that needed attention. His role organically evolved to include product development and design, marketing and new business ventures.
“Over the years, I started taking on more and more, and [my parents’] started taking on less and less,” Steven says. “On top of that, as the business evolved into new things, I became the subject matter expert on those new business aspects.”
Under Steven’s leadership, the company evolved from one singular brand, Ming Wang, found in boutiques and specialty stores to a collection of brands stocked in major department stores nationwide. The company also invested in e-commerce to service customers directly.
Over the years, Meison grew its portfolio of brands, all catering toward the same customer. There are currently five brands underneath Meison’s umbrella: Ming Wang, Misook, Masai Copenhagen, Kasper and Jones New York. Each brand has its own DNA — with Kasper offering occasion and career suit pieces while Jones New York features more business-casual items — but they all cater toward the same customer.
“We’ve always been focused on women as our main customer and have been more on the occasion side,” Steven says. “Our goal is to provide the most curated assortment of quality products. We try to make sure to sell products that, if a woman is trying to make an impression somewhere, we have products to help satisfy that.”
Through Meison’s growth, Steven has never lost sight of the responsibility behind running the family business.
“I come to work every day trying not to be the guy who ruined the business his parents started,” Steven shares. “That’s a lot of pressure. Granted, the current business is nothing like the business I walked into, but still – the odds are not in my favor. I work really hard to make sure I don’t ruin their legacy.”
Steven continued by referencing the disconcerting statistics behind second-generation businesses. In a 2021 article, The Harvard Business Journal referenced a commonly quoted study that states, “only a third of family businesses in this study made it through the second generation.”
Steven credits Eddie’s and Ming’s willingness to new ideas and openness to his and his brother’s leadership to a reason they have found continued success.
“They built this together side by side,” Steven says. “Both of them worked like crazy to get to this point. When you have an entrepreneurial mentality, a common thing that occurs is a lack of willingness to let go. So the credit has to go to both of them.”
Kris Tamburello
Coming To Texas
Alongside Eric, Steven took the next big leap and moved Meison to North Texas in 2006.
“We saw all the benefits of North Texas that everyone else in the country saw, but we just saw it in 2006,” Steven jokes. “It’s centrally located. It has great infrastructure. It has a major airport. I think the local government is very supportive of businesses. Moving from South Florida to North Texas was game-changing for us. I do not think we would be in the position we are in today if we did not make that move.”
Meison first moved into its current headquarters, warehouse and distribution center in Grapevine, an almost 50,000-square-foot location. After more than a decade of successful operations in North Texas, Meison took on its next real estate venture in 2020: a lux 15,000-square-foot showroom in Southlake where Meison engages with customers and hosts major market retailer appointments.
“We offer experience-based retail. It’s less of a traditional retail space and more of a stylist showroom,” Steven explains. “It’s designed to be a full retail environment, but it can be done by appointment or invitation-only events.”
With the showroom investment and COVID-19 affecting how people dress, Steven admits 2020 hit the company hard.
“It was really rough,” Steven says. “We sell products for people to go see other people, and that’s the opposite of what was happening in 2020.”
This wasn’t the first time Meison experienced the ebbs and flows of running a small business, so the project continued and the storefront opened in December 2020. Now, the Southlake storefront hosts exclusive events, like the February 22nd kick-off party for the Ming Wang collaboration with Dallas-based content creator Tanya Foster.
Tanya, a fashion and travel influencer and blogger who has more than 116k Instagram followers, first worked with Meison in 2018 on a video Misook project. Tanya says the craftsmanship behind each garment stuck with her, so when the company approached her for this project years later, she says it was a quick yes and ended up being a “win-win.”
This collaboration marked the first time Meison partnered with an influencer to create a collection. The February event offered a tangible experience for Tanya’s followers and Meison customers to experience the garments.
“I want them to come in and get to touch and feel the product,” Meison Director of Retail Performance Katie Kittrell says.
Katie says after Meison decided to collaborate with local influencers, Tanya was a natural fit for this hands-on project.
“We really wanted to find someone who embodies the body and spirit of Ming Wang,” Katie says. “We are a very timeless, polished brand, and I thought Tanya was the perfect fit. She’s timeless, classic and polished.”
The collaboration kicked off in early 2024, when Tanya met the team in the Southlake studio. The team asked Tanya about her closet’s essentials, inquired what resonated with her audience and discussed upcoming trends. The group then went on a shopping discovery day, where they watched Tanya move through and interact with different items and ended up in Tanya’s closet discussing her go-to pieces.
“The discovery meeting is the most important part of the process,” Katie says. “It enables us and our design team to understand who Tanya is, what she likes, what her aesthetic is and what drives her.”
After the discovery meeting, Tanya worked closely with Meison’s designers during each step, from reviewing the initial sketches and mood boards to attending sample fittings where each piece was meticulously tweaked to meet everyone’s expectations. She even attended retailer meetings where she helped present and sell the collection into stores.
“I talked about where I would wear the different items,” Tanya says. “To watch the retailer place the order was so satisfying. I loved it. The brand was so phenomenal to work with; they trusted me to be myself.”
Katie says actively including Tanya provided an authenticity that comes through in the final product. The collection features 19 individual pieces including jackets, skirts, pants, a few blouses and suiting pieces, with most prices retailing for under $300 per item. Katie says Meison wanted to keep the pricing consistent with the rest of Ming Wang’s offerings so it felt like a natural extension of the brand.
“I curated a collection that works well with itself, but it was super important to me that it worked with what you already have. I feel like I stayed true to myself and what I like, and that’s going to resonate really well,” Tanya said. “I learned so much through this partnership and have a whole new appreciation for the business.”
Continuing The Family Legacy
While Meison has a large footprint in the local community, Steven says North Texas customers are often surprised to learn the company is headquartered in Grapevine.
“There’s a lot of individuals out there, even in our local community, that we serve with our products that don’t know we are in their backyard,” Steven says. “When people visit both our facilities in Grapevine and Southlake, they are shocked, not only by how nice they are but by the overall community around us.”
The whole Wang family now calls themselves locals: Eddie and Ming live in Westlake, Steven lives in Westlake with his two daughters and Eric lives in Colleyville with his wife and three sons.
“Everyone is within 15 minutes of each other,” Steven says. “That’s one of the benefits of owning a small business – you get to choose where your office is and then you usually get to choose the areas you want to live in.”
Evolving from a two-bedroom Queens apartment to owning two Texas business facilities, Steven says he cannot believe how the business has grown into itself. Steven says Eddie and Ming’s primary focus was to put food on the table, and now the business has become a nationally recognized enterprise.
“We lived week by week, month by month, quarter by quarter,” Steven says. “The idea that they have an organization like this today… I don’t think they would have imagined it.”
In a joint statement, Eddie and Ming said, “We never imagined it would grow as much as it has, but our hope has always been to pass something meaningful to our children. With both Steven and Eric now involved in the business, it brings us great pride to see how it continues to evolve for the future.”
Looking toward the future, Steven stresses Meison will continue creating wardrobing solutions for women in career and occasion settings. He also suggests Meison strives to eventually have 8-12 brands within its portfolio.
“We would like to build a strong portfolio of brands that account for the variety of choices that our customers want,” Steven says. “Our job is to put the best iteration of each particular brand in a manner that’s understandable and simple for our customers to shop.”