Russian Tailor Patterns Success as a Mehlville Business Owner

Eugeniya Klebanskaya sees herself as being no different than any other American who is just trying to make their way in the world. And in many ways, she is right. 

For the past six years, Klebanskaya has owned her own tailoring business, Alterations and Shoe Repair Shop located at 4354 Telegraph Road. She is educated, cultured, sophisticated and single-handedly raised a daughter.

But the path that led Klebanskaya to where she is today began a world away—and under circumstances few of us could even imagine.

Klebanskaya first came to the United States in December of 1996 from South Beach, Russia. For her and her 18-year-old daughter, there was really no choice. Leaving Russia was a matter of survival. It was the collapse of the Soviet Union and according to Klebanskaya, “There was really no structure; nobody to protect you.”  

Prior to the collapse, she said that the Soviet Union was strong.

“It was structure. Everything was complete. Everybody knows where to go. Everybody knows what to do... then everything was destroyed. No one knew what to do. The government was destroyed. The KGB was destroyed. People started moving to other countries. They started looking for ways to make money. They had to feed their families,” she said.

She explained that prior to upheaval, South Beach Russia was a large city where culture flourished. The area was rich with museums, art and the ballet.

“And in one second, it was dark,” she said. “Nobody would go anywhere at night. There was a lot of street crime. And after that started—organized crime.”

For Klebanskaya and her daughter, living in fear was not an option. She has an uncle who had settled in St. Louis 32 years ago after the first Soviet immigration wave in 1978. Sometime after, another uncle and then her mother all made the trek. It was natural that she too would land here.

So Klebanskaya left the country she called home; the place where she grew up, where she was educated in business and sewing and began a career as a professional tailor, in search of a new life and new opportunity.  

She found it almost immediately.

“My first job was at Mark Shale,” she said. But she was young and not very wise to the ways of American business. The clothing store hired her to work 32 hours a week. It was just enough under full-time not to have to pay benefits. After only about four months, Klebanskaya was laid off.

“It was absolutely devastating to me,” she said.

Coming here as a Jewish Russian, she was able to receive aid from the Jewish community. They helped her to get started by providing her first month’s rent free. Each month after that, rent was based on a sliding 25 percent increase every month until she was paying 100 percent.

“After that, you’re on your own,” she said. “So you have four months to establish yourself in a country where you know nothing.”

Klebanskaya was at the end of her four months.

But fate intervened. Prompted by a tailor friend she met at Mark Shale, she applied for a job at Men’s Warehouse.

The current tailor there was an Indian immigrant who was in need of some assistance.

“They paid me $10 an hour, cash for two days of work. After that, they are going to make a decision if they are going to hire me or not,” she said. “I told him, I don’t like men’s clothes in Russia. I don’t have any experience with men’s clothes. But he saw something in me. It’s like, I don’t know how you say it in English, but your eyes see something and you are afraid, but your hands do it anyway.”

It turned out that she had all the right skills. She just needed someone to believe.

“It was seven months after my life began in the United States. Seven months,” she said.

She worked with Men’s Warehouse for four years.

But true to her driving spirit, Klebanskaya began to want more.

“When you start to feel comfortable and your skills are growing, you want to have something better,” she said.

So, she went in search of it. Over the next few years, Klebanskaya worked for various retailers as a tailor. She spent some time at Saks Fifth Avenue and at Nordstrom until she got fired, a defining moment in her life.

“I’m not a religious person, but I believe in something that is in the world for everybody. It’s your desire, your willingness to do something,” she said. “It’s more than luck. There is no lucky person who is sitting there doing nothing and something good comes to him.”

“I decided I am not going to work for nobody else again,” Klebanskaya said. “I have enough skills and professional management; I can do something for myself.”

Once again, the stars had aligned in her favor. With nothing more than a phone call, Klebanskaya found herself in the position to buy her own tailoring business.

There was a Russian couple who owned a shop where she is now located. They had been in the United States for 10 years, running a small sewing and shoe repair business. They were just biding their time until retirement when Klebanskaya came along.

“If Nordstrom had fired me one year before, none of this would have worked,” she said. “They fired me in January. On the first of February, I found the shop. On the first of May, I buy the shop.”

Even though there have been some challenges along the way, Klebanskaya has no regrets.

“If you don’t risk, you don’t have champagne,” she said. 

Despite the accent, she knows how to speak to people to ensure her customers will get what they want.

“She always has something when you need it. She does a great job and she’s always smiling,” customer Vicky Groth said. In fact, Groth said she won’t go to anybody else.

Klebanskaya even has plans to expand her business. She plans to partner with a designer to make custom orders for dresses, wedding dresses, costumes and anything else someone may want.

“Sometimes you just need to surround yourself with good people and put in a little bit of work. You don’t need a lot. Maybe that’s what they call luck,” Klebanskaya said.