How a New Wave of Young Entrepreneurs is Reshaping Chinatown
Tech-savvy Millennials are reinventing Chinatown’s business community. Here’s how they’re bringing younger generations back.
“Are you frustrated with your Asian hair sticking out on the sides or back?” chimes a voice. “The culprit might be your barber shaving past the parietal ridge, causing the dreaded ‘Messed Up Crown’. But don’t worry, there’s a solution!”
This is an Instagram video posted in March by @12pell, the account of a Chinatown barbershop named after its address. With their pumps of short format video content, they generate about 100 million views a month across three platforms — TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. “Not even GQ hits those numbers,” said Karho Leung, a 32-year-old founder and co-owner of 12 Pell.
With more than 1.8 million followers, the store has become a leading voice in the world of men’s grooming on TikTok. In other words: it’s more than just a barbershop in Chinatown.
But Leung is just one of many …
Before opening 12 Pell, Leung was originally just an accounting guy with a CPA certificate. “That’s like a very traditional narrative of Asian American success that can make your parents happy and praise you at the dinner table.”
But, it was not the definition of success where he could see himself forever, or where he felt like he fit in. One day, he had the lightbulb moment:
“I used to go to Spanish and Dominican barbershops and those barbers were much younger and so the energy was different,” Leung explained.
From a cultural standpoint, he recognized that within Chinatown, where he grew up, there was little equivalent — most barbershops are operated by older men, and serviced older individuals. That is how the concept of 12 Pell was born in 2018, which aimed at a younger audience.
But overcoming that gap didn’t come without challenges. “There were less than four customers a day,” Leung recalled, citing the struggles he faced just two years after opening his barbershop. Despite the negative stigma associated with COVID and the Chinese community, he pivoted off of the hardships that befell his business.
“We found a ray in the tunnel so that we could create a new business model for ourselves,” Leung said. His strategy of making more of a social media play ended up becoming his winning play.
Just across Pell Street from 12 Pell, there is another small business that is also breathing new life to create a new identity for the Chinatown community. Spencer Okada and Khanh Tran, a Japanese and Vietnamese couple in their 30s, opened Artbean Coffee Roasters, a coffee shop on Doyers Street, in May 2022. Before that, Okada was an animator with a tech background in Reno and San Francisco, and his wife Tran did her master’s in architecture design and interior design in New York
“I didn’t drink coffee until moving to New York. I moved to New York about 10 to 11 years ago and it was just kind of the nature of the city — always up and going, moving, doing something, and working,” Okada explained.
The city instilled in him a love of coffee. He was able to learn more about the coffee scene in New York by visiting countless coffee shops to caffeinate himself while freelancing for animation projects. “That was kind of an eye-opening thing [and] that’s how I really got into specialty coffee,” Okada said. The duo are relatively new to the coffee industry, but they are leading a local trend for ‘third-wave specialty coffee shops,’ which are not common in Chinatown.
Okada and Tran not only focus on the quality of coffee beans that they roast every week in Brooklyn Navy Yard, but they also take into account the nature of the neighborhood, which is very tight-knit and community-oriented. Artbean has so far collaborated with four locally based Asian-American artists. “We swap out new artists every two to three months, and they have a wall to do their exhibition in our store,” Okada explained.
From the big artists in Chinatown such as Gentle Oriental or Peach Tao, who does a bunch of murals around Chinatown, to small businesses or organizations like Mott Street Girls, Artbean Coffee Roasters has worked with other community members in Chinatown and done donation drives for Apex for Youth or Soar Over Hate, the non-profit organizations for Chinatown.
“I didn’t think we would survive if we weren’t a part of it, and really embraced or enhanced our presence in the community,” Okada said. Neither of the couple is from Chinatown, but both said they still had a deep connection. “I feel like we all need to kind of stand together and really represent Asian Americans as a whole, because any minority anywhere needs their representation and needs to kind of like, help each other, just build that community.”
They now expect to offer something new to the area through various community events that resonate with the younger generation while not trampling on the toes of the older generation in the neighborhood. “We want to do some more events on Doyers Street where we can get people to come by free, bringing a lot more to the community than just selling coffee,” Okada added. Okada and Tran are envisioning themselves doing another collaboration with Welcome to Chinatown, which launched their Small Business Innovation Hub campaign in March.
“We’re looking to basically build a physical space in Chinatown that will be our headquarters and is like an incubator for new businesses and an acceleration hub for existing ones,” said Jackie Wang, the organization’s chief operating officer. “So many business owners were like, ‘We want a space where we can kind of get together, share ideas outside of our laboratory and hear the feedback from across all different generations.’”
Indeed, Tisya Siswanto, a 32-year-old founder of Lanterne Candle Lab, remembers being inspired by Welcome to Chinatown even before she launched her own business. “They really inspired me to open up because I saw a lot of creativity and passion in Chinatown,” Siswanto said. “When you go out and come back, we have a link to Welcome to Chinatown, a small business directory.”
Despite initial skepticism about her idea, she was able to persevere with the support of the community, especially other small business entrepreneurs. “Having individuals in the community who are looking out for you is beneficial,” Siswanto remarked.
As the business grew, Siswanto believes that it is time to give something back to the town she loves. “It’s not simply a candle shop; it’s more like a community gathering place.” She always encourages her customers to go out and support other local businesses in the area while they are waiting for their candles to dry.
“I don’t think you can see this kind of collaborative energy in every neighborhood,” said Wang. “It’s kind of a cliché, but the immigrant grit is a sense that you really feel when you look at the business centers that have been around. And I think a lot of younger entrepreneurs are really inspired by the that they get to join when they opened here.”
