Mark Cho is making moves.
The owner of The Armoury, a four-unit men’s retailer with locations in New York and Hong Kong, has acquired his largest brand, named a new creative director and launched a second career as a pseudo real estate developer.
Cho, who founded The Armoury in Hong Kong in 2010 with Alan See, focuses on classic and bespoke menswear. At one point he was also co-owner of Drake’s, the London-based haberdashery brand, but he sold that to Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen of Bestseller fame at the end of last year.
That allowed him to put his focus more squarely on his other businesses.
Cho said that during the pandemic he was spending most of his time in Hong Kong and contemplating the future. The historic Pedder building where his Armoury store was located was struggling so Cho approached the landlord about reimagining the property and creating a European-style shopping arcade. It took him six months of discussions, but the landlord finally agreed to let Cho take a shot at the redevelopment.
The result is Pedder Arcade, which offers six shops, a bar and a coffee shop targeted mainly to men on the fifth floor of the city’s Pedder Building.
Cho characterized himself as the “creative director of the property,” in charge of the design of the public spaces and developing the tenant mix. “We gutted the floor,” he said, adding that it was “pretty gnarly” for the first year and a half. “I got every friend I could find and had them do pop-ups.”
But eventually he found six complementary retailers to take permanent spaces in the site. In addition to The Armoury, the space includes the Lok Man Rare Books antiquarian bookseller; Kaneko Optical’s, a Japanese brand founded in 1958 that opened its first Hong Kong flagship; Phillips Perpetual, the auction house’s watch arm; The Whisky Library, which sells valuable spirits, and the Davidoff of Geneva cigar lounge and shop.
“The project has gotten a lot of attention globally,” Cho said, adding that the space has been a success since opening. “My flagship is there and it does better than it did at the best mall in the city, at one-third of the rent.” The Armoury formerly had a store at the Landmark Central mall, which he closed and consolidated into the Pedder location.
As a result of the success of Pedder Arcade, Cho has begun working on a similar project in Tokyo but it will most likely take three years before it is completed. He said the space he’s revamping consists of three adjacent buildings with several existing tenants whose leases will need to expire first. He already has one commitment from Sigma, a family-owned manufacturer of cameras and equipment, and he’s also considering moving Ring Jacket there as well.
Ring Jacket has a long history in Tokyo. The tailoring brand was founded in Osaka in 1954 and got its start replicating Ivy League style. Ring Jacket is The Armoury’s largest vendor and when its owner, Kunichi Fukushima, son of the founder, was contemplating retirement and had no succession plan, he decided to sell the brand to Cho.
“We were their number-two client,” he said. “They were always interested in me being their successor. So I got a nice offer for Drake’s and moved that into Ring Jacket.”
Cho, who had previously served as creative director of The Armoury’s in-house brand, which accounts for 80 percent of the company’s sales, knew he needed some help. So he turned to Kentaro Nakagomi, founder and creative director of the Japanese outerwear brand Coherence, to step into that role.
“I was his first stockist,” Cho said, adding that Nakagomi creates “beautiful overcoats” which he will continue to design despite joining The Armoury. Coherence is part of the Japanese fashion conglomerate Abahouse International.
Nakagomi’s debut collection for the company will be unveiled in New York on Oct. 21. Cho said the new creative director worked with the Armoury design team and him directly on the spring collection since it was already in progress when he joined.
Now that Cho has more free time, it begs the question of whether he’s also seeking a real estate project in New York where he can replicate Pedder Arcade and the Tokyo project?
“I was approached by a landlord on the Upper East Side, but it just didn’t feel right,” he said, adding that the space was too big. But never say never. If the right opportunity presents itself, he might just reconsider. “The concept is more fun when it’s not that big,” he said.