Davide Cotugno Executive Tailors is not your average clothing shop. The custom-made men’s and women’s clothing store in Brecksville, Ohio, is family-owned and currently run by three generations of a family that was born for this line of work.

If you walk into the shop, you might see Giuseppe “Joe” Cotugno, who at 89 years old, is still making custom suits by hand for the store’s customers. Joe represents the first generation of the family business. He was born in Italy and started working at a tailor shop at just 8 years of age. Joe cut his first suit by the age of 14 and opened his own store by 18 years old.

Joe’s son, Davide, the store’s owner and namesake is the second generation. Davide learned the trade growing up in his father’s shop in England, where the family moved when he was just 2 years old.

“It was a natural progression for me to get involved,” said Davide. “I was into clothes and style, so for me it was great. It was in the bloodlines.”

It was in 1978, when the family moved again, this time to northeast Ohio in the U.S. Davide’s mother urged the family to move across the Atlantic after visiting the states for her brother’s wedding.

“She saw the opportunities the U.S. presented, so we came here,” said Davide.

For the next 19 years, both Davide and his father worked at various tailor shops in the Cleveland area. Joe specialized in design, while Davide closed deals with customers. It was in 1997, after an exceptional string of success selling suits, Davide decided to open a store of his own and he took his father with him.

The Davide Cotugno Executive Tailors label is the only line of clothing that can be bought at their store. While they have started developing more ready-to-wear clothing for customers, most of the suits, sportscoats, shirts, pants and sweaters are custom-made.

“We try to be boutique so someone can’t go somewhere else to get what we have,” said Davide. “We want it to be special here.”

For the past 14 years, Marisa Cotugno, Davide’s daughter, and third generation representative, has been a partner in the business. Currently serving as chief operating officer, Marisa will one day take over as the primary owner of the business.

“I went to college thinking I was going to be a nurse, but studying nursing for two years helped me realize working in our family business was what I really wanted to do,” said Marisa.

Marisa finished with a business major at Wheeling Jesuit University, immediately started working at her family’s shop following graduation and has been there ever since.

Business was booming for the Davide Cotugno Executive Tailors. 2019 was their best year yet in sales, but the year that followed, was their worst.

“COVID-19 hit and our business was tremendously affected. We were closed for three months so we had to scramble. We needed to figure out how are we going to stay in business,” said Davide.

In the short term, Marisa led the charge in developing and selling masks to help the business continue to generate some sort of sales during the pandemic. Then her husband, who works for Team NEO, a business development organization in northeast Ohio, told her about an opportunity he had recently heard about that could really help her family business — ELITE Americas. The timing seemed to be right as ELITE was going to be accepting 12 businesses from the northeast Ohio area into its year-long program, starting in the fall of 2020.

“COVID showed us we really needed to hone in and figure out where we wanted to go from here. The timing for this program was right,” said Davide.

“They’ve had us really focus on taking our balance sheet and finding where the holes are, where the growth opportunities are, areas we need to work on,” said Marisa. “They also use those numbers for projections, so it’s really focused on a lot of metrics and has given us a big picture view.”

The program has helped Davide Cotugno Executive Tailors figure out its true identity as a business and learn where its focus and energy should reside.

“We’ve learned we need to target a specific clientele and we’ve come up with some initiatives to help us get to those clients,” said Davide. “We’re not a brand for everybody. We can’t be, because we have a certain quality level that we want to put out, and if we go below that, our brand name gets tarnished. ELITE has helped us really focus in and develop a strategy for doing the best we can with what we’re best at to achieve our larger goals.”

Already, Davide and Marisa have mapped out some key initiatives to help the growth of their business that include outsourcing certain services to free up staff, continuing to build up its e-commerce sales and further developing it’s ready-made clothing offering.

“They took us through some exercises that helped us look at our business in ways we had never looked at it before,” said Marisa. “One exercise had us set sales goal for the year and work backwards. It helped us learn how many clients we need to see in a year and how much revenue per client was needed to reach that goal. This exercise really helped us discover our new initiatives.”

The program also prepares its clients to strengthen their positioning to potential investors with a clear and focused presentation of their business.

“The point is to help us present something strong, so if we want to move into some larger endeavors, and need to approach investors, we can provide a healthy overall picture of our business,” said Davide.

Both Davide and Marisa are only partway through the program, which will wrap up in September 2021, but already, they have seen large benefits from their participation.

“Having this outside perspective is really valuable. Even the perspective working with other small businesses in the program is huge,” said Davide. “We’ve learned a tremendous amount already, and we’ve really sharpened our business. We’re excited for what’s to come.”