We are very proud to announce that today our CEO Amy Tsai was honored at the prestigious Woman of the Year event in Sacramento, CA!
In honor of Women's History Month and in celebration of the contributions to society made by remarkable women throughout California, one woman from each Senate and Assembly district are invited to come to the State Capitol to be honored for their accomplishments. The women are then recognized as Woman of the Year in a formal ceremony on the floors of the Senate and Assembly.
Amy Tsai is the Co-Founder and CMO of Leg Avenue, Inc., Southern California based women's clothing brand recognized worldwide for innovative Halloween costumes, fashion hosiery, and intimate apparel.
With over 30 years’ experience as a businesswoman, Amy is a champion of women’s rights in the workplace and dedicated mentor, crediting her female-driven workforce with the success of the company. Through her volunteer work with high school students, she hopes to inspire young women to take on leadership roles in business.
An immigrant from Taiwan, Amy comes from humble roots. In 1984, when her family first arrived in Los Angeles, they made ends meet by importing low-priced goods from China and selling them at flea markets around the city. Tsai's father started the family business because leggings and tights were easy to carry and didn't cost much. Six days a week, Amy and her three siblings sold them at swap meets.
While at USC, Tsai studied music and played French horn in the marching band, but she learned business and design in the wholesale clothing mart in downtown Los Angeles' Toy District. With an innate marketing ability and undeniable fashion sense, she was intricate in helping the family grow the business and to bring new and exciting product concepts to life.
It was Amy who gave the company its name, Leg Avenue.
She soon became the company's designer, focusing on encyclopedic variety — every color she could think of, adding glued-on bows, zippers, and bits of lace. The family elected her its business representative while she was still in college and it was at a Halloween trade show in Chicago, a customer suggested the company get into costumes, and she pitched her family the idea. The following year, 2000, Amy returned to the convention with a rudimentary, but revolutionary costume design; the women’s black cat costume. That risk turned out to be the company’s turning point and she has never looked back.
Today, from humble beginnings to running one of the largest costume and intimate apparel wholesalers, Amy has grown Leg Avenue into a multi-million dollar apparel design, manufacturing, and retail distribution business. The companies vast collections are favored among Hollywood’s elite and aim for nothing less than to make every woman feel beautiful and confident.
Running a business whose core focus is to make women feel empowered, it’s no wonder that the Leg Avenue workforce is largely made up of diverse and talented women. Fearless in her business approach, she encourages her team to not be limited by their positions, to offer up their ideas and to challenge the status quo, while embracing the occasional failure as a learning opportunity and a necessary step to growth and change. By empowering individuals and taking more than a few chances, Amy has proudly created a workplace full of entrepreneurs, which has greatly enriched the not only the company but the community as a whole. Her unwavering belief that nothing comes from playing it safe appears to be the secret to her success.
