EXCLUSIVEAlan Horowitz, Founder and Owner of Alan David Custom, Is 'Proud' of Building His Business and Having a Great Relationship With Clients: 'They're Like Family'
Alan Horowitz exclusively tells OK! about Alan David Custom and what's to come.
March 20 2025, Published 9:17 a.m. ET
Alan Horowitz, Founder and Owner of Alan David Custom, was born to be in the fashion industry, as he comes from a long line of retailers — "from my great-grandfather Jacob Ginsburg, who founded Kingsbury Clothing in the 1920s," he exclusively tells OK!. "Then my grandfather founded a similar store in the 1960s, which my uncle took over. That store was then going out of business, so I took over and established Alan David Custom."
"I worked at that store for nine years, which is where I learned the trade. It was an off-the-rack, popular-price mega store, a legendary store, and once everybody stopped wearing suits in the '90s, that store took a dive. We were not able to survive the casualization, and that's how I came to be. I opened up a store in the World Trade Center area, which was also off-the-rack, branded off-the-rack. After 9/11, no one could get down to the store, so we expanded and continued to expand our custom to selection until we eliminated off-the-rack completely," he continues.
Alan David, family owned since 1926, makes some of the finest suits, and their staff have become part of people's special days when they come to buy something special for their wedding or memorable life event.
"They're not just making a transaction. For example, for a wedding, you go to a wedding, you leave the place, the place is gone, you eat the food, the food is gone. What's left? What's left is the pictures — and in the pictures are the garments, the videos," Horowitz, who knew from an early age that he would be in the fashion world, explains. "If you mess that up, you can literally mess up their whole day, so it is a big deal. Many customers come back after their weddings — and it's a big thing when they start their relationship off with a wedding."
What Horowitz is most proud of is that he has never "ever missed a wedding."
"I'll do everything to make sure someone is happy with the final product. There's no detail or no ask that's too big, and we never say no to anything. Every single request we try and do, we have tremendous checks and balances in regard to our product and someone's happy with the final product," he shares of their work ethic.
After having the business through five generations, Horowitz and their staff "give everybody the best possible situation and experience in every area, whether it's the sellers who are fabric experts, the measurers who are tailors, customer service people who are not AI and not answering the phone in Taiwan," he notes. "Our finishing tailors are critical and our workshops that we make garments in are hand chosen and generationally tested. We realize that our business is only as good as the weakest link and so every single area is critically important to us."
After opening his first store in 2001 — just two blocks from the World Trade Center — he was forced to rebuild his "business from scratch."
"We had no customers, no sales, basically no location and tremendous debt. Then, the financial crisis in 2008 came again. We had clawed ourselves out of the 9/11 haul and we took a tremendous step backwards. We had to kind of reinvent ourselves after that. I then bought a factory in 2011 in Long Island City which was a complete and total disaster. It collapsed in 2014 and it almost took the retail business with it. I was forced to file for bankruptcy, close the factory and file for personal bankruptcy. I spent four years in Long Island City there full-time. Meanwhile, in Midtown, that business we lost about 50 percent of our volume and almost lost it completely. So, in 2014 we had to really rebuild it. We were on the verge of going out. Then, just when we started to really hit our stride in 2018 to 2019, COVID came along. Once again, we had to shut down and slowly, slowly build it again. We really didn't know if we were ever going to reopen again in 2020," he says of the ups and downs.
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However, Horowitz was able to persevere. "In 2021, there was almost no business. Then, the vaccine came out in early 2022 and slowly, but surely you had to juggle staff and keep them on payroll during COVID. We did it," he continues of the accomplishment. "In 2025 we moved from a side street class C building on 40th street between 5th and Madison to a 10,000 square foot showroom on Madison Avenue on 53rd Street. So, when you ask me how proud I am, I'm pretty proud."
Over the years, Horowitz — whose mission is to "make every client as happy as possible, one at a time" — has gotten to be a part of someone's "important" day and he wouldn't have it any other way.
"Every client gets our undivided attention and whatever mistakes we make, we refund, we recut, we go to people's houses on weeknights, weekend nights, all the time whatever we need to do. Our star-spangled banner is whatever it takes to make a customer happy. That is what we will do," he shares of his philosophy. "They're like family. We're already to the point where we're doing second generation — where customers' sons now are coming into the showroom to get a suit made. So, custom tailoring is a relationship driven business, and I'm very proud of the relationships that I have built with my customers."
As for what the future holds, Horowitz is excited to continue improving and growing. "2024 was the year of the move, giving people a much better shopping experience with our new location and also upgrading our website. 2025 is the year of operations and personnel — trying to upgrade our personnel and train our personnel more to be able to answer more sophisticated questions and do more things for the customers, as well as operations to get ourselves technologically caught up to the rest of the world. 2025 is the year we're adding higher-end American clothing, including Oxford, and hand-sewn suits. We also want to expand our women's wear presence, so we've got a lot going on," he says.
He concludes: "When it comes to true bespoke attire in the city of New York, I truly believe there is nothing better than the collection of fabrics, to the master tailors that take the measurements for shirts that produce the garments, to the finishing tailors that we have on site, to our customer service people who answer the phone and answer questions and don't live on chats or call centers. Every single aspect of this business has been under the microscope and really has been worked on to try and give the customer the greatest possible experience possible."
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