Two Friends Opened a Store. Two Weeks Later, NYC Shut Down. Two Years On, They're Thriving.

“The news media industry has gone through a lot of changes in the past 10 to 20 years that have impacted the way news is both produced and consumed,” The Pew Research Center noted last month, in its latest observational piece about the public’s declining trust in news, the media, and government institutions. The partisan divide in media trust is wider than ever.

What can journalists do to rebuild trust? Reconnect with the communities they serve.

As part of this effort, foreignpress.org has launched The Pulse of America, a series that will bring more interviews with the general public and the issues that concern them to the forefront, highlighting stories of perseverance during these tumultuous times. Foreign correspondents, much like their native born counterparts, should feel closer to the public and local communities given the often wide gulf that is perceived to exist considering that many of the correspondents we serve cover national and international politics.

The first entry in this series is featured below.

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Steaven Kwon and Arkady Hasanov have been friends for over twenty years. The two men, former classmates at the now defunct Interboro Institute, own and operate Crown Opticians, an eyewear store located on New York’s Upper East Side. But the shop had a rocky start, opening just two weeks before former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered a citywide shutdown in a bid to flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections in March 2020.

Faced with seemingly impossible odds, the two friends had to think fast to stay afloat. In the process, they became much closer. Their story is just one of countless others from business owners who had to rethink their lives–to say nothing of their business strategy–in the face of global crisis.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

ON HOW THEY ENTERED THEIR FIELD

Arkady: For me, I didn’t even know what an optician was. I went to school to become a physical therapist or somewhere in the medical field. As I was going to school, it was hard to get into the physical therapy program. There was a long line to get in and we didn’t have the financial means to stay in school that long. So then my mom directed me to this field.

She asked around and said, “Why don’t you become an optician?” I went to Interboro and thought, “Okay, it looks okay, but it’s not, you know, anything crazy.” So I went into it and I fell in love with it. Just to experience the reward when you put the first pair of glasses on a child who couldn’t see his mom clearly… when you give someone the perfect pair of eyeglasses, you see the connection. That’s where the reward is. That was the win for me.

Steaven: For me it was very different because of my father. I came back after I graduated. I had aspirations to play golf. That’s what I did since I was a young kid.

Arkady: He played professionally.

Steaven: Well, semi-professionally… and then when I came out here from California, I didn’t know what to do and my father had a friend who was an optician. He had a store on the Upper West Side actually and he said, “Why don’t you become an optician?” And I was like, “An optician? What does an optician do?” And he said, “Oh, you dispense glasses. Why don’t you become an optometrist?” And I said that I didn’t want to become an optometrist because I’d already finished school, I didn’t want to go back to school, and he said, “No, no, it’s a short program, short program.”

So I went and next thing you know, I was stuck. And I ended up loving what I do. It wasn’t something I was looking for but when I was working in this industry at first I hated it but then I was like, “Oh, this is great!” and I conformed it to me. What I like about it is that it’s very technical. It’s like medical meets fashion. I love both aspects of it… For so long, I would get this feeling of nirvana. A person comes in and they say, “Oh, I wouldn’t buy that Steaven but you know what, I trust you” and then they call me back a week later and they love it. “I’m so happy, I love it, thank you, thank you.” And I love that they love it. It gives me satisfaction, shows me that I am doing the right job and doing it the right way.

He tells me I’m meant for this. I wear my emotions on my sleeve because I love what I do… The ups and downs of the pandemic, it’s been really synonymous with what Arkady and I have gone through here.

Each time we’d wonder, “How are we going to get through the day?” and we’d get through the day. And we’d wonder, “How are we going to get through the month?” and we’d get through the month and I don’t know how but this place is a diamond in the rough. It really is. This was a clothing store before… me and him came from two different backgrounds but we made it work. He needed to find me and I needed to find him.

ON OPENING A BUSINESS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PANDEMIC

Steaven: We opened on March 2, 2020. I picked up the keys.

Arkady: We actually started construction the next day and two weeks later they announced the shutdown and we were like, “Oh my God, what’s going on here?”

Steaven: It was horrible here. The streets on Lexington Avenue… they were so empty. I mean, it’s gotten a lot better, it’s progressively gotten a lot better, but the fact that you can find parking anywhere on Lexington… Lexington Avenue, remember? It was desolate. It was all our life savings into this place. We poured every penny that we had, both of us, and it was looking very bad but I remember one time, and I say this a lot, we had to stop construction here because of the pandemic and I think two months or three months after, we were talking [and] I remember him asking me, “Steaven, what do you think? Do you think we’re going to be okay?” And I know his personality. He’s a worrier, I’m…

Arkady: He’s the yin to my yang.

Steaven: And I’m thinking to myself and I say, “Yeah, we’ll be good,” but inwardly I’m also very scared because there’s no business, no doctors open and a lot of our business is through referrals, to opthamologists… there’s no avenue…

Arkady: There was no foot traffic. We used to look outside the window for hours, for days.

Steaven: And we just got to know each other more and more. Because I’d known Arkady for over 20 years and it’s amazing that we started in this business together, in this industry together, and we sort of came back full circle. It’s pretty amazing, actually, how you and I sort of reunited in that way…

He asked me one day, outside, and I think we were leaving work, he asked, “Do you want to do something?” and I’m like, “Where? Go out to dinner?” And he tells me, “Let’s open a business together.” And that’s how it happened… But unfortunately, when we signed the papers [to open the business], it was January 29, and then March 2 I picked up the keys and we started renovations.

Two weeks in, we had to stop of course because of Covid and it was a difficult time because the landlord had given us a couple of months, two or three of free rent but that went by quick so now everything is coming out of our pocket. We never got any relief from the government, we never got any relief from the landlords, we never got anything.

Arkady: No pandemic relief.

Steaven: Nothing. You know why? Because we had no tax record from the previous year, because we had opened our corporation, our tax ID in January so we didn’t qualify.

Arkady: Horrible.

Steaven: People like us? We’re in the worst situation because it’s an ambiguous situation. If we at least did something in September of the previous year, we could file something and at least get something back. But we had nothing to show for it because we had no tax records…

 So we were then, I think a few months in, calling around to see which doctors were open. A lot of them were closed and rightfully so because of the pandemic and there is one doctor, and he needs a lot of press because he’s been amazing to us. His name is Dr. Wayne Whitmore. Absolutely amazing because we knew every day would be… I know he was helping us. He was amazing, very instrumental to us, Dr. Whitmore. If it wasn’t for him in the beginning, we wouldn’t have survived. All the other doctors, they helped us out, too but Dr. Whitmore was the first, in the beginning. We had a… what, three month stretch? Three or four month stretch?

Arkady: We used up the free months we had, which had no business… Thanks to Dr. Whitmore, we started reaching out to other doctors and they were open a couple of days here and there so still we weren’t at full capacity as you can imagine but we kind of relied on them for referrals–

Steaven: We went through the ophthalmologist and some of the patients found him through the opthamologist, some of the patients found me through the opthamologist and you know, it’s like karma: You do things right and good things will happen. Even though everything was stacked against us…  If I knew Covid was happening, we wouldn’t be here, we definitely would not have been here because who would want to sign papers with Covid right around the corner?

ON WORKING IN SPITE OF ADVERSITY

Steaven: Through the pandemic, we had to go through a lot of adversity, Arkady and I, but I never gave up. I never gave up and that’s the honest truth. I was waking up, on four hours of sleep. He knows. I sleep like four hours a day and we had to do it because if we didn’t do it the odds would be against us. I knocked on [the door of] every ophthalmologist I could get my hands on and I was there seven o’clock in the morning. Seven o’clock in the morning. During the pandemic. If I knew they were here this one day, “Knock knock.” Because I knew they were busy so why would they have time for people like us? That’s what we did.

Arkady: For me, there was just no going back. Once we established the store… it was very important to me. Because I had a lot of opportunities to open up a store and for some reason, I would say, “No, no.” Even financially, you know, I had help. Before. My father, may he rest in peace, said, “Arkady, open up a store, I’ll take care of it financially, you don’t have to worry about anything.” And he passed away ten years ago so I couldn’t ask him. But when Steaven came along and just going back to what he mentioned, when I asked him if he wanted to open up a store together, he said, “Yeah.”

Steaven: Yes. I said yes.

Arkady: And I asked him, “You don’t want to think about it? With your wife?” And he said, “No, I know your character.”

Steaven: I know his character and he is straight up.

ON THEIR APPROACH TO CUSTOMER SERVICE

Arkady: The advice I would give them [small business owners] is to basically have passion for what you do and try not to cut corners because you’ve got to give the people what they want… But also love. We give them love.

Steaven: It’s the old-fashioned way and it works. And what I mean is that what we give them is patience and these customers that walk in here, it’s a personal relationship. We make it personal. A lot of times when I show them glasses, it’s done usually in five or ten minutes but I want to get to know the person and vice versa. I think that’s what separates us from other places. I think that when you walk in the store you’re always going to see either Arkady or me.

There are no robots in here. You see a lot of these offices, a lot of these places, everything is computerized, automated, but here you get a personal touch. You get real people that are just normal people and what we offer, and I think they see it, is hard work. We go above and beyond. I’ve made deliveries to the Bronx, he’s made deliveries to Queens, I’ve made deliveries to Brooklyn.

ON HOW JOURNALISTS CAN BEST SERVE THEIR COMMUNITIES

Arkady: You’re going to the source. You’re not interviewing some big conglomerate. These are all small businesses here and this is real life and if you just reach out to the little guy and see what they have to say, you can spread the word around to your channels, to your contacts and see it’s very different to what the big companies and other establishments will report.

Steaven: I’m of South Korean descent and if you read the news from there and you read the news from here, it’s a different thing, two different perspectives. For us, what you’re doing is going straight to the source, talking to the common people. Yes, we’re a store on the Upper East Side, but he and I know that when we leave this place, we’re common, we’re normal people, we’re middle class people, we’re nothing like that, all average Joes here… The common people, that’s where you’re going to get your answers.

Arkady: Journalists need to reach out because you can’t expect a normal citizen to support journalism if it doesn’t come to you. When it comes to you, it plants a seed in your head and I think it sort of resonates that way.

Steaven: when you have people who actually care, love what they do, back to the basics, it shows. You coming here at 8 in the morning, it shows.,, When you reach out to small places that no one wants to reach out to… I think it resonates… I know you guys do hard work but I would have had different ideas about what you guys do. It definitely opens up my perspective and Arkady’s perspective.

ON THEIR FRIENDSHIP

Arkady: It’s been the best 21 years.

Steaven: He was wearing oversized suits when we first started. So was I. That was the style back then. And we always kept in touch and who would have known? It was amazing though!

Arkady: In my language we like to say beh shayrt'. It was meant to be, like husband and wife.

Steaven: No one could have known that this would happen. And this is why you should never burn bridges. Work hard, do things the right way. Don’t burn bridges. Because if I had made a bad impression, if he had made a bad impression, then this wouldn’t exist. But I knew what his character was and everything found its place.