A few months ago, I was reading an article online, and I came across Shop CJW, a small business that makes scarves and accessories that are “playful in print, but serious in quality.” As someone who loves incorporating playful prints and colors into my outfits, I fell in love CJW’s adorable pieces.

CJW was founded by Christina Wang, a fellow boarding school person! After reading about Christina, I knew I wanted to interview her – her work ethic mixed with creativity inspired me so much. So often we are told we fit into one box, whether that is the “numbers” box or the “art” box, but Christina does it all. Christina creates the prints, crunches the numbers, and runs the entire CJW show! Here is Christina in her own words.

1. You are an artist. When did you discover this passion, and why did you decide to merge it with a clothing and accessories?

I think with most people who are artists, they generally realize they enjoy drawing at a pretty young age. As a child, I always took art classes, and throughout high school, I was pretty involved in my art studies. I did a lot of independent studies – mostly ceramics, [and] a little oil painting. When I got to college, I majored in visual arts – so mostly oil painting at that point at Brown. I also did a class-blowing class at RISD, and that was actually a really fun experience. And then after that, I thought I was maybe going to keep art as a hobby and not really pursue it as work. I graduated in 2009, so right after the 2008 financial crisis, so there were pretty much no jobs. I briefly considered going into finance, but that didn’t end up happening. At that point, I was like, if I like art so much, let me try considering that as my main career choice. I went to grad school – I got my MFA in fine arts in New York for painting. I did that for two years, and after that I had a studio in the City. I was painting for about a year, and then it got to the point where I was a little bit lonely. I was very used to making art in the context of the classroom where there are deadlines, there are people to critique your work, and there is a community. I realized once I left the confines of school, making art on your own is sort of a different thing. It is a pretty lonely process unless you have a target or a show or something to work towards, which at that point, I didn’t have. You obviously want to sell your work, but you don’t want to appear really commercial or really desperately wanting that type of commercial engagement. But as an artist, you obviously want that because you need to sell your work to make a living. I always found that wanting something but appearing to not want it to be very difficult.

Then I thought maybe I could make some accessories with elements of my artwork to promote my paintings, and that would be an easier sell, as it’s harder to sell people paintings. I thought I would make scarves because, of all garments, they have the simplest idea – the closest to a 2D piece of art. At first, I thought it was just going to be in service of bringing attention to my work, but as I got into it, I loved it more and more. I liked working with different people, I liked the practical notion of selling something that was meant to be sold, and just having it be very clear – like I am making a fashion accessory, I hope you buy it. Then it took on a life of its own, and then it slowly took up more and more of my time. That’s how it became the full business!

2. You were raised in Hong Kong – has this culturally rich city influenced your work at all?

Yes and no. I think a lot of my artistic inspiration comes from things I love, things that I see every day, things that get me really excited. So obviously memories of my youth of my favorite foods or my favorite Chinese dishes. Those are certainly inspirations that have made their way in my designs, but I don’t specifically address my Chinese identity or Chinese culture per say. But there are certain prints – we have a Chinese zodiac print. I think that definitely is more of a reference to my Chinese cultural identity. Having grown up in a different culture than I currently live in brings a more global minded perspective to the work. There are different interest points from my travels and Hong Kong as well as living in New York.

3. You have a world-renowned education between Phillips Exeter Academy and Brown University. Did this education prepare for you for being the founder of CJW? Or did life experiences prepare you for this role? Or both?

I think it is obviously both. I think everything in life matters to inform you for the way you are. Obviously, there is nothing in school specifically that taught me about how to start a business because a lot of the day-to-day specifics – like how do you ship a package, how do you calculate taxes, how do you set up a website, how do you use photoshop – that is not something I specifically learned in school. And then the sort of strange thing about my artist/business career is that I never worked for anybody. I went from being an artist of my own to starting a fashion company. So, I have extremely limited work experience, so everything I do for CJW, I have learned on the go. I think a lot of the practical nuts and bolts are from life experience.

I have peers who have been very helpful and very supportive of my work. For Exeter, I’ve gone back and done a collaboration with the Independent Art Study Class because I still remain in very close contact with my high school art teacher who was one of my biggest art inspirations and mentors. I’ve gone back and partnered with her to do a collaboration with her class to make a scarf together with the students with the prompt: What is Exeter? I talked about the design process with the students. Then recently, when we had a new pajama launch, one of my old classmates at Exeter who was a managing director at WWD, was very helpful in lending a hand and helping write an article. It’s more the network of people who I have met in school that has come to be really supportive and helpful, and the more day-to-day nuts and bolts learning is more from life experiences.

4. How has your experience as an artist and small business owner been shaped by being an AAPI woman?

I think being an AAPI person, I think fortunately being an Asian female in general, let’s call it a minority status, is sort of the “easiest” one, I want to say, out of all of them. In that way, I’ve never faced a ton of hardship or discrimination, which I’m thankful for. But in terms of what the impact is, I think it’s really just opened the eyes in terms of my inspiration pool – the breadth of things I am aware of, the things I am inspired by, the experiences that I have experienced. It’s a richer fabric and a richer history to draw from, so I am very grateful for that.

Being a small business owner in this time has been really nice. In the last ten years since the Internet, online shopping, things like Shopify, Instagram, small processing payments like Stripe, has made it very easy for a small business to get started. There’s a lot of ready-made solutions that you can tap into from a tech point of view to set up your website, to take payment at a pop-up. These are ready-made solutions that I am not having to figure out or having to hire someone to write really expensive code. That’s been really wonderful in terms of being a small business owner at this time. Obviously, right now there is an interest in small business and female founders, so that’s cool too! I guess the challenge compared to some of my peers is that sometimes I am not as well connected, so, to get press and publicity may be a little more challenging, but every small business owner has different [challenges]. I don’t feel sorry for mine, and the reality is we are very, very small, and it’s been hard to get noticed. It’s easier to start a small business, so a lot of people are starting small businesses.

5. What is your favorite part of running your business?

[My] very, very favorite part is that you get to take something that’s in your mind and actually make it into form. I think that is so cool. Every time I send out designs and samples come back, I never get tired about how exciting that is – to really see something you make come to life for the first time. I think that’s a real privilege for people who are designers. That is very cool that you have the idea and the infrastructure in place to make that happen.

The nicest part of running a small business is that whatever I decide gets to happen pretty quickly. If, for example, if I want to make a new product category, I do some research, I design something, and I can get it made pretty quick. It’s not like I have a lot of people on me to get permission, so that’s really exciting that things can move pretty quickly in a small company.

6. What is next for CJW?

I think this is a really good question because I took a little bit of a break last year in 2021 in terms of making new stuff. We still have our old stuff, the website is still up, but I haven’t put out a new collection in a little while. Last year, it was the middle of COVID, I was pregnant with my second baby, I went to Hong Kong to give birth towards the end of the year, and I did a full renovation of my apartment in New York, so it just did not seem like the right time to be making a lot of new things and holding a lot of inventory, just for my life being a little chaotic and market-wise not sure where [the market was] going. So, I took a little break, which has been really nice because I’ve been in business – by this September – eight years. As I mentioned, I never worked for anybody before, so my business is figuring things out as I’m going. Sometimes, it gets to a little bit of a frenetic pace – it’s just solving this problem then the next problem. I think having the time to take a little bit of a breather – it’s been really nice to do some of the things I don’t traditionally love doing or I’m not really good at doing. Like right now, I’m working on re-setting up my accounting process, taking some time to do some data research to learn more about my business from a numbers point of view, and taking the time to do some of the things that I find personally boring but that are also important. Since [we are] a small business, the bad news is I have to do everything. There isn’t a part where I can be like, I don’t like this. Let me give it to someone else. It’s all done by me!

Also, I’ve been taking this time to talk to a lot of my customers. A lot of people have been really helpful in wanting to get on a phone call to see, Hey what are you thinking? How did you find us? What products have you bought? What products are you looking for? So, I think that’s been really interesting to hear different people’s perspectives. Certainly, I have a brand vision of what we’re doing to see what is actually resonating or getting through to the customer which has also been a good experience.

In terms of what to look forward to, I’m not exactly sure yet. I’m still in a discovery process for that, but I am really excited. I think [new] things will start trickling in I think 2023.