Meet Evita Chu | CEO of PDR Knitting/Entrepreneur/Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Evita Chu and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Evita, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
I was born in Indonesia, into a very strict, disciplinarian family. Like most Asians, my family included, they emphasized family values, fear of God, high education, discipline, obedience, zero complaining, hard work, and perseverance. I remember, my childhood after school was full of tutoring classes, music classes, language classes, and sports. I don’t even know how I could do all those as a little child, but I did without complaining. Mind you, in Indonesia (back then), school is Monday – Saturday! Because my daily schedule was very tight, I learned from very early age how to properly manage my time, between school responsibilities and extra curricular activities outside school.

This upbringing is not just myself, but pretty much across the board in Asian culture. We must understand the tough life, even though it doesn’t necessarily mean financially poor but also including as such, but learning how to endure hardships without complaining. School in Asia is very very tough, not to mention tough exams, tough tests, tough grading system, and extremely tough National Examination at the end of every grade, since 1st grade! If you fail one subject, you must repeat the entire grade for the next year, and that would be the most shameful thing ever.

This upbringing made me become a tough person.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
PDR Knitting was started because of accidents: I had 2 car accidents back to back in a month that prompted me to quit my job, and while I was rehabbing at home, accidentally a friend of mine asked if I could knit him some sweaters. That friend told his other friend, his other friend told another friend, and my big break was when Mike Gonzales, the founder of Mike & Chris, called me if I could knit some sweaters for his collection. I said yes right away.

Little that I knew, Mike and Chris was a big brand of the moment. After I delivered my first batch of prototypes, he asked if I could duplicated them into 72 pieces. I was knitting everything at home by myself with no help.
I said yes, and thought,”I will figure out a way later.” So, I started calling around to see if there was any knitter available for work. I finally found one, but he was very reluctant. The first question he asked was,”Do you have an office?” I said,”No.” He said,”I have been out of job for 2 years. I need a job, not just one time job. I don’t see you are serious if you don’t have an office.”

That day of the phone call was December 24, 2006. I called my mom to accompany me to look for a studio in downtown LA. We found a tiny space, only about 700 sqft for a good price, I signed the lease that day. I called the knitter,”Hi, I have leased an office. Please start working on January 2nd, 2017.” He said,”Are you serious? Am I going to be in a payroll?” I said,”Yes….” –> again, I didn’t know what the future would be, as always I just said yes first and figured out later.

January 2nd, 2017, we all went to work. The office was so empty, only my knitter, my mom, and I were there. We worked so hard to fulfill 72 pieces of duplicates, with the help of my mom doing some finishing touches to the sweaters. However, miraculously, new clients kept on coming, and I was able to keep my first employee on the payroll.

Initially, I thought I would be just a little creative knitwear studio that makes prototypes and samples for designers. Mike Gonzales asked me,”What are the production prices for these garments?” I told him that I had no intention to be a manufacturer, I was not set up to produce in bulk, so I could not come up with a production price. He was a little bit upset and said, he had paid so much for samples and duplicates, and now I was telling him the news that those pieces could not be produced? I was taken aback, and I had a 5-minute quite moment to figure out what to do… and I finally said,”YES, I will do it.” How, that remained to be answered until I figured it out later.

Within 6 months, I had to add more people to my team to 6 people. We were doing production for Mike & Chris, and new clients kept on pouring in. California Apparel News heard about PDR Knitting, as the “New BOUTIQUE factory in Los Angeles”, having positioned ourselves in the luxury market. Did I position myself in the luxury market? Honestly, I did not even know, because when I had to do the costing for Mike and Chris, the timing to make those sweaters was so long, so they were priced high. Since the pricing was high, we had attracted luxury brands to develop with us. Soon, PDR Knitting name was spread in New York, and I went to New York for the first time for business, meeting many luxury clients.

Fast forward to now, we are now at a 7000 sqft facility, with 16 employees and all kinds of knitting machineries on site. We develop and produce everything in house, using the best technique possible, matching the European made knitwear quality.

At one point, we had 24 employees. But due to the raising minimum wage, we had to lay off some of our employees and went automatic on many processes of the knitting production.

—–

No, it has not been a smooth road at all. There have been many struggles along the way:

1. Employees were sacked by one my first clients, a big famous brand: Because in the beginning, we had a really humble, open space. Clients knew and was able to interact with my employees freely. One client took the phone number of that employee, offered him a bigger pay, and the employee lied to me when he quit. Turned out he moved to my client. The employee called some other employees, and total 6 were sacked. It hurt my heart, but I did not let my heart be troubled. I already had planned for the business future. I’m not bitter anymore now because the incident just moved my plan a lot sooner than what I anticipated. I am in the better place now because of the incident. I see the glass always half full.

2. Financial: Because I had to move my plans a lot sooner, I had to make a lot more financial investments in automated machineries. With an amazing business partner who is the best in handling financial & management matters, we were able to plan out the financial investment accordingly.

3. Account Receivable/Non-payment clients: I have a lot of them! This is always a problem. I went from being a sweet, nice person to a very stern person who demand payments now or else. It’s still a struggle until now, but it has gotten better.

4. Rising cost of manufacturing: This is inevitable. There is nothing we can do, we cannot really fight the lawmakers, but this is also current struggle that is not ever going to get better. I am for liveable wage, but I do think that the $17/hour should not be a blanket price. Each job should dictate what the job is worth. A job as a Certified Nurse Assistant should not be priced the same as a guy who trims threads. I feel that this needs to be addressed, and I wish I could be part of the voice, because I do want to bring fashion manufacturing back to USA.

5. Inflation: This is of course a result of the rising cost of everything. I don’t understand what the lawmakers are thinking when they raise the minimum wage base. It doesn’t mean that we make more. When the base cost rises, the end price rises. Our portion remains the same. I don’t know where it will end.

—-

We’ve been in business for 17 years, and all these years, I have built a great reputation.
We are known as the “Luxury Boutique Manufacturer”, that caters to the luxury market. The way I work with clients is very hands on. In a way, I am the “dream interpreter” who makes their dream sweaters come true.
A lot of my clients are not from knitwear background. The way knitwear works is completely different than fabrics cut and sew. So I do a lot of handholding, consultation, from choosing yarns, choosing stitches, the best construction to achieve the design, and also costing.

PDR is different than the other knitting factories because: (1) we are luxury, (2) I understand knitwear because I am a knitter myself and also a certified knitting programmer who knows how to run and operate these machineries, (3) I understand yarns because my training in the yarn making business was very intensive in my previous job, (4) I was a knitwear designer before I owned this business, and I am able to utilize my creativity when “interpreting” the designer’s knitwear dream.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Oh, wow, it’s hard to point tourist spots in Los Angeles. I mean, Hollywood Boulevard is not the safest place anymore now, so that’s out. I’m not a fan of shopping, so I don’t know where to take them…

Day 1: I’d love to take them to hang out in LA Koreatown. It’s my favorite spot! It is so lively, good drinks, good food, good vibe.
Day 2: Breakfast at Einstein Bagel, then head to Arcadia Arboretum in the morning, and Little Tokyo for lunch. There is a super delicious, traditional Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki restaurant in the Little Tokyo Village. It is very authentic!
Day 3: Spend a day in the Huntington Gardens and Library in Pasadena. It is such a serene place, where everyone can feel safe and relaxed, while enjoying the plants, gardens, and scenery.
Day 4: I’d probably take them to a little road trip to San Diego to enjoy the delicious, authentic Mexican food and check out some apple pies.
Day 5: Temecula is a really nice place to go, actually! Great wineries and we can try the hot air balloon ride!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The biggest credit is of course to my parents. Parents are always the ones who get the most bad attitude, disrespect, disobedience, and ungratefulness from us because we all know they have unconditional love for us. We would not dare to do this to anyone, especially teachers! But, parents always got the worst treatment from us when we rebel against them. Myself included. I give credit to my parent for never giving up on me, even when I was in my most ungrateful behavior. My dad was the fun one, yet he was the one who always told me to fly as high as I could in any career I chose. My mom was the one who taught me to be independent and brave, yet know my place as a future wife and mom in a family.

I have a funny story. My true passion was in music, I started playing piano since I was 3 years old. Naturally, I became very serious with my musical studies, and my dream was to be a concert pianist in a big orchestra. I begged my dad to visit the most famous conservatory in Austria, when I was in 9th grade. Thinking that it was just a teenage phase, my dad took our family to vacation in Vienna and we visited the conservatory. After we got back from vacation, my passion for music went twenty-fold, and I was sure this was the career I wanted to choose. My dad gave me an ultimatum: If I chose music as my first choice, he would not pay for my college. But if I chose a major that would be useful in the long run and (in his words) would give you a comfortable life, he would pay for my college and I could take music as my minor.
You can guess which one I chose….I took the deal no. 2. Life was tough for a little me.

My other life mentor/disciplinarian was my piano teacher, Ms. Stella Satyadi. She was extremely strict, no-nonsense, she would not take mediocre as the result of her teaching. She believed, having talent is an icing on a cake. But discipline and consistent practice will get you far, even without talent. I thought she was mean, but later on, I realized how her discipline made me who I am now. I even named my first child Stella.

The last person I would like to give my shoutout to is my husband. He is a man of very little words but is very intelligent, very diligent, tough, hard-working, very disciplined, and very supportive of my entrepreneurial endeavors. He is very insightful in many things, and we can converse on the same level of intellectual bandwidth, which is very important in our relationship. We balance each other out. His leadership in our little family of four is very important especially raising children in such a tough social environment like now, where kids these days are growing up with high-tech gadgets, are influenced by social media, not to mention the mentality of entitlement among young generation.

Website: www.pdrknitting.com

Instagram: @pdr_knitting

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evitachu/

Twitter: @pdrknitting

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pdknittinglosangeles/

Image Credits
Profile Photo credit: Sachiko Studio