The tailor sits at his table, paying great attention to detail. At Bonham Strand’s workshop in Lai Chi Kok, even the button holes on the suits are hand-stitched.
South Korean Jong Lee is the managing director of RGL Holdings, of which Bonham Strand is a social enterprise. While the summer months were slow, the tailoring business does turn a profit and Lee is keen to turn it into a large manufacturer – for which you need more than 200 workers.
The enterprise serves several purposes – providing quality suits for discerning buyers and refitting donated suits for asylum seekers who have to go to the Immigration Department or the unemployed who to spruce up for a job interview. Then there are the older, often master, tailors, who Lee hires – who were left behind when most tailoring went across the border.
But one of the primary motives of Bonham Strand is to help young, rehabilitated drug addicts get back on their feet.
It teaches them attention to detail and gives them skills
“I want the best tailors to come and work for me and we also we have been training young men and women,” Lee says.
The young men stay at a Caritas centre, while the young women live at a drug treatment and rehabilitation centre on Lamma run by the Barnabas Charitable Service Association.