Founder and CEO, American Dream Home Goods Inc
Where From: Zhengzhou, Henan
Where Now: NJ
Favorite NYC Restaurant: Chongqing Laozao
This interview was completed by Michelle Maiuri, Director of Events.
SERICA: Can you share the journey that led you from where you grew up to founding American Dream Home Goods, and to the life you have now in the New York City and New Jersey area?
I'll start with my first ten years, which I spent in China, in Zhengzhou, in Henan Province. It's right in the middle of the country, a very blue-collar place, similar to Cleveland, Ohio here in the U.S. I was born in the 1990s, and back then China was very much under construction. Skylines were starting to come up, they were building subways, and I remember being seven or eight and feeling this immense optimism and anxiety coexisting at the same time. It was a very interesting time to be living there, and it had a huge impact on me.
I grew up in a nice family. My father worked in the tobacco industry, and both my mom and my grandpa worked in import and export, so I was always surrounded by businessmen and businesswomen. That inspired me to become very entrepreneurial at a young age. Some people might say I was very annoying, too. I loved asking older people questions, and I loved trading Pokémon cards and toys with classmates at recess. I treated recess almost like a commodity exchange. I didn't like taking no for an answer, and I enjoyed hustling and negotiating tough deals with my friends. Trading cards taught me an important early lesson: you never know what's possible until you try, and with enough perseverance you can sometimes change people's minds in unexpected ways.
My parents moved us out of China when I was ten, because my mom wanted to start a company abroad. Her goal was the U.S., but we were waiting on green cards, which took a while, so we got our Canadian version first, the maple cards. We moved to Vancouver and later Toronto, where my mom started her first business and where we lived for three years. When I was 13 we moved to New Jersey, I started high school, and my mom started her second business: assembling and selling shopping carts to grocery stores and local shops around New York City. Not everyone in the city has a car, so everyone uses personal shopping carts. It was a very stable cash-flow business.
I went to middle school in Canada, then came to the U.S. for high school and college, studying at Binghamton University, and NYU in the city. After graduating I spent two years at Merrill Lynch as an investment banker before quitting to join the family business. My mom was a little burned out and wanted to sell, and being entrepreneurial, I always wanted to take over that business one day. So I did, in 2015.
SERICA: You took over a stable shopping cart business and turned it into a home goods company. What changed, and how did you break into retail?
The first thing I did was decide I didn't want to be in the shopping cart business. It was too commoditized, and you couldn't really scale it. Most people use those carts in New York City, but go to Chicago or other suburban cities and people don't need them. I didn't think I could grow it any further, so I shifted the business to home goods. We started designing and innovating products for the kitchen first, then bath, then storage.
At the time it was very hard to break into the Walmarts, Targets, and Costcos of the world. But I noticed that off-price retailers in the U.S., your TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, and Marshalls, were growing very fast, expanding 20 to 30% every year and opening new doors, while legacy department stores like Macy's were slowing down. So I put all my energy into those companies, and we grew rapidly alongside them. Today we're one of the biggest vendors for TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, and Marshalls in the home space, mainly for storage, and we're now expanding into Walmart, Amazon, and other retailers.
We have about 50 employees, roughly 40 in the U.S. and 8 in China. We source from around the world, but it's still about 80% China, with the rest split between India, Pakistan, Turkey, and the U.S.
SERICA: In 2022, you acquired Richards Homewares, a brand with a history dating back to 1939. What drew you to that acquisition, and what have you learned about honoring a legacy brand while building something new?
We didn't really transition into home goods until 2015, so at the time we were a relatively young business, and I competed with Richards Homewares for a long time before I bought them. They were always a respected brand in my space, with over 85 years of history, a very strong product foundation, and experience in many categories. They were the biggest vendor for Bed Bath & Beyond, a customer I went after hard but just couldn't get into, because Richards beat me every single time. Not because they had the best product, but because they had the deepest relationships.
I definitely want to keep the Richards legacy alive. A dream of mine is to build a company, or a brand, that lasts over 100 years. When I look around, the only companies with that kind of history are banks like J.P. Morgan and insurers like Prudential. There aren't many 100-year-old businesses in my space, and I want to build one. Richards has been around for almost 90 years, and that's something I want to keep building on.
SERICA: Your products come in a lot of variety, from door hooks to mirrors in different colors. How do you think about giving customers options, and about sustainability?
We love to give people options, and people love to have options. It's a balance, though. Give too many and people get overwhelmed; give none and they get bored. So we always try to offer at least four or five different options.
We also definitely want to be sustainable, because that's where the world is moving, and that's what young consumers are voting for with their wallets. We try to eliminate plastic and use recycled materials whenever possible. That's a balance too, because you have to weigh cost and quality. For something like a ladder, it's very hard to use recycled material, because you don't want someone to get hurt. But for products like hooks and certain plastic items, you can absolutely use recycled plastic and other recycled materials.
SERICA: What inspired you to join CINGS, and what has being part of this community meant for you personally or professionally?
It's the people. My first event was in April this year, at Jason's house, and I loved the quality of the people we have in CINGS. I was introduced by Michael Ma, who had just joined as well and brought me along.
I love a community that connects people across different industries and backgrounds. Most of us are Chinese American, but we still have different political ideologies and perspectives, which is great, because I love talking to people and learning from each other. Running a business can be demanding, so it's also nice to meet people who understand what it's like to navigate different cultures and build careers, companies, and families. And I want to do something impactful for the Chinese American community, too.
SERICA: You sit right in the middle of global supply chains. What is your hot take on U.S.-China trade and the future of consumer goods and manufacturing that you think more people should be talking about?
Right now I think the news is very divisive and oversimplifies a lot of things. Reducing reliance on China and moving everything elsewhere is easier said than done, especially in my industry. The reality is that consumers are very practical. They may not care where a product is made, but they care about quality and price, especially with oil prices as high as they are right now.
Different countries have different strengths and weaknesses, so a sourcing decision really depends on the product, the materials, capabilities, quality, cost, and reliability. It's a long list. China remains an important manufacturing base because it has a depth of suppliers and very strong infrastructure, and it can develop and scale products very quickly. Companies also have long-term relationships with manufacturers there, and those relationships are very hard to duplicate.
My company is always trying to diversify. We've gone from 95% reliance on China down to 80%. But it's going to take a lot more time, investment, and energy to keep going. It's not as simple as saying, let's move our factory to Vietnam and start shipping tomorrow. We're also always looking for new suppliers, both to improve our products and to innovate and come up with new ones.
SERICA: At Serica, we talk a lot about paying it forward and strengthening the Asian diaspora community. What does giving back mean to you, and how do you hope to make an impact through your business or work with CINGS?
That's certainly a passion of mine. To me, giving back means taking what I've learned, the knowledge, the relationships, the resources and opportunities I've been able to build, and sharing them with other people to improve their lives. In business, that means creating a company where people can grow, make contributions, and take on meaningful responsibility. In real life, it means helping people achieve their goals and their financial freedom. To me that's more impactful than just writing a check and handing it to somebody.
Through CINGS, I hope to help strengthen the connections that make it easier for people in the Asian American community to share advice, open doors, and support the next generation. I'm especially interested in helping younger professionals and entrepreneurs learn from each other's experiences, and in contributing to a community where more people can build successful lives and achieve financial freedom.
Thank you, Jun Wang, for your amazing insights!!
More spotlights to come! To learn more about CINGS and their work and upcoming programming, check out their website www.cings.org and follow them on LinkedIn.
