As we return from the holiday season and settle into 2020, we wanted to take this time to share some of our reflections from 2019 with all of you who helped make this past year so memorable.

2019 was a year of many firsts at East Meets Dress (EMD). We celebrated EMD’s first birthday! 🎉It’s crazy to think about how far we’ve come, yet how early we still are on our journey towards building a long-term, sustainable brand that celebrates Asian-American culture.

This past year also pushed Jenn and I outside of our comfort zones. I left my startup job to pursue EMD full-time. Jenn went solo on a month-long international business trip to meet with suppliers and ensure that we were creating dresses of the highest quality that met our standards. 

As naturally private people, Jenn and I also opened up to sharing more about our business and story with others on podcasts. This led us to connect with and meet other awesome Asian-American entrepreneurs who we now regularly share inspiration and tips with. 

In January, we launched our first Chinese New Year collection and it became a tradition to name our dresses after inspiring and trailblazing Asian women. Some of our favorites included our Vera and Gemma dresses named after Vera Wang and Gemma Chan.

During the spring, we also grew our team! Instead of just me and Jenn, we’re now a small and mighty family of four. Our other favorite highlight from the spring was getting to work with high school students to celebrate their heritage in style by choosing to rock our cheongsams to prom.

When summer rolled around, we hosted our very first team offsite in SF filled with good dim sum and team bonding. 🥟

We also updated our packaging to be more environmentally friendly with custom tissue paper and mailers that are compostable. Inside every package, we've also included goodies and stickers (from our friends at Sticker Mule) to brighten up your day.

In addition, for our busy brides who needed a dress on a short timeframe, we launched a Ships Now collection!

During the fall and winter, we invested in expanding our collections from new dresses and accessories to more outfits for men. We also set a company record for completing 10 photoshoots in the span of 6 days and got to work with amazing Asian creatives to bring these photoshoots to life!

The last highlight of the year included a tweet from the award-winning writer, Esme Wang, whom we named one of our dresses after.

What’s on the horizon for 2020?

There’s a lot we’re excited about in 2020, some of which include expanding our partnerships with other Asian-American brands and launching more products catered for Asian-American weddings to make EMD the destination for your East Meets West wedding.

Lastly, customer experience remains top of mind for us as we continue to grow. We want to forever be able to provide you with that personal touch and customer service you deserve regardless if we are a team of four or a team of four hundred.

Building a bootstrapped company from the ground up has been the most challenging and rewarding thing that we have ever done and we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for supporting our business. It started with a simple idea to help celebrate Asian culture in style and your support and engagement is what keeps us motivated and humbled everyday that we get to do this. Here’s to a year of dreaming big and living your life to the fullest! 🥂