The Gen Z owner of Ice Cream Embroidery in Grangetown is bringing the Insta generation to the decades-old store
TWENTY-seven-year-old Suliman Khan’s family have owned their business on the corner of Stafford Road in Grangetown for over 40 years.
The building was bought for just £6,000 and started out as a carpet shop, with the family living upstairs.
Now an embroidery business, Sul is using social media to take people behind the scenes – and attract a new generation to the shop through his bespoke street wear creations.
Previously called Street Supply, Sul officially bought into his dad’s business to create Ice Cream Embroidery (ICE) in 2020.
But the business of making clothes, and the studio itself, has been part of Sul’s life for as long as he can remember.
When Sul was a child, his dad, Saffi, owned a store in the city centre selling designer clothes, before moving to the family-owned Grangetown shop.
“Every Saturday and sometimes Sunday I would work with him there, from when I was about 11 to before I went to uni. So I was always around clothes and that was kind of my intro to that world.”
At the age of 15, Sul started to help his dad print designs on T-shirts and hoodies. A year later, seeing a gap in the market, his dad bought an entry-level embroidery machine. “We got a basic one. It was really good but it would slog along,”
But Sul caught the bug and soon started his own embroidery brand with one of his friends. Despite being teenagers, they made 2,000 sales in two years.
“I was making it all in the studio, and then my friend was marketing it. When you’re young kids, everyone wants to support you. That really gave me the buzz for manufacturing and making clothes.”
While studying at Loughborough University, he was selling 25 T-shirts a day on Depop and Etsy, coming up with designs and sending them back to his dad in the studio to be made. Yet, despite his interest in fashion and clothes-making, Sul says he has never felt naturally creative.
“I wasn’t really that creative at all to be honest. I have a younger brother. When I was in my teens, creative stuff would always come to him really easy. He’s a really good artist but I could never ever draw. But when it comes to having ideas, I like putting my spin on things.”
For example, when he started making custom pieces for his friends, he always added personal touches to designs, like the location coordinates of their village back in Pakistan.
In his designs, he says he takes inspiration from Japanese culture, as well as old Pakistani techniques of embroidery. In the summer he started embroidering flower designs on to football jerseys, which he’s particularly fond of. “It’s quite a cool contrast, football and floral,” he said.
Another major highlight was working with a bespoke tailor to embroider the waistband of heavyweight boxing star Tyson Fury’s shorts for his match against Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk in Saudi Arabia last May.
Since creating ICE, Sol sees social media as the biggest opportunity to grow the family business and take it to a new audience. The business’s Instagram account has more than 21k followers.
He spends hours in the studio creating content to showcase his designs and show people the behind-the-scenes process of garment manufacturing.
“I guess people that haven’t got too much of an insight of how manufacturing works. It breaks it down a little bit easier.”
He says his step-by-step process videos that he posts on Instagram always go down well. Earlier this year, he made a series of videos showing the daily routine of a street wear manufacturer during Ramadan.
While his dad takes on the more traditional jobs such as businesses who need logos embroidered on staff T-shirts, Sul predominantly deals with new clients coming through Instagram who want custom pieces.
Asked what his dad thinks of the new emphasis on social media, he says: “As long as there’s orders coming in, which there are, then he’s happy with that. He’s always gonna have customers that he’s dealt with for years, but now we have the other cool custom little things that we’re doing on Instagram.”
Despite working with around 25 brands, the majority which are London-based, both family and the community in Cardiff remain cornerstones of the business.
Sul’s brother, Haaris, a talented boxer who has represented Wales at the Commonwealth Games, works the afternoon shift in the studio. His mum, Sarah, has also started working in the store in the last two years.
“She’s a real natural. It’s nice for her to be around, because I remember certain days something would have happened in the studio, or like someone might come in and I’ll be telling her about certain things at parts of my day, and she’ll obviously listen to the stories that I’ve told her, but she’d never have that first hand insight. It’s been a pleasure actually.”
He says the studio also has a firm “open door policy” and that his friends frequently come in to chat and chill out. And when orders come in from local clients in Grangetown, he’ll always prioritise those first.
With the success of his designs and social media savvy, he is often asked whether he aspires to having his own brand, outside of the family business.
But Sul is in no rush to decide what’s next: “To be honest with you, I’m kind of enjoying the process now and just seeing where it takes me. I work hard every day.”
