Small Biz

Shawn Liu, 25

Hillhouse Tailors
New Haven, Conn.

Shawn Liu was in grade school when his father left his job at BIC and started his own ink manufacturing business out of the garage. Liu says watching his father develop his company—it now exports ink to China and employs workers in the U.S. and China—ensured "I wasn't moving in blindly" when he started his own business.

And Liu's two years working as a research analyst at the Federal Reserve in Washington and his trips to mainland China and Hong Kong, where his parents emigrated from to attend graduate school in the U.S., also gave him solid business footing.

After graduating from Yale School of Management in May, Liu started bespoke clothing company Hillhouse Tailors, which sells men's dress shirts made in Shanghai to the U.S. market that start at $65. Liu plans to expand into men suits as well as women's clothing. Through the company's online store and revenue-sharing agreements with independent clothing retailers, Liu estimates the company will have revenues of $1.2 million by 2009.