Ports is an international luxury fashion house founded by Japanese Canadian fashion designer Luke Tanabe (1920–2009) in Toronto in 1961. It specializes in luxury women's and men's ready-to-wear as well as accessories. Acquired by Chinese Canadian brothers Alfred Chan and Edward Tan in 1989, Ports expanded into the Chinese market in the early 1990s where its parent company — which traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange from 2003 to 2018 and has since been privatized — now operates more than 300 retail stores. Sub-brands of the fashion house include Ports (International) in China and Asia as well as Ports 1969, with subsidiaries in Milan and New York City as well as a flagship store in Paris, for global distribution. History The company was founded as Newport Canada in 1961 as an import business for clothing from Japan. It evolved into a women's fashion business with Vancouver-born Luke Tanabe, whose parents had been Japanese immigrants to Canada, as its designer and was renamed Ports International in 1966. In the 1970s, the company expanded in North America, later opening signature boutiques in international locations. In 1970, Ports opened its United States flagship store in Manhattan, followed by stores in Copley Place, Boston and Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California. Ports expanded to the United Kingdom, opening its London–based flagship on Bond Street in 1978, with additional boutique openings in Cambridge and Bath in 1979. Ports design team personnel changes included the hiring of Tanabe's daughters Christine and Miki as designers in 1980, co-designers Dean and Dan Caten in 1988, as well as Fiona Cibani (* 1965) and Tia Cibani (* 1971) and — wife and sister-in-law, respectively, of the brand's later owner — as creative directors and chief designers in 1992. In 1980, Tanabe had created Tabi International in Toronto, a Canadian store chain with more affordable clothing for women. Tanabe retired in 1989 and sold Ports and Tabi to Toronto-based Etac Sales Ltd. (ESL), which had been co-founded by Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur Alfred K.T. Chan (* 1947) and his brother Edward Tan. The brothers were born near Xiamen, fled with their families to Hong Kong as children and later immigrated to Canada. ESL filed for bankruptcy in 1994. Alfred Chan re-acquired a Chinese apparel factory in Xiamen, two test stores in Shanghai and Xiamen, and long-term rights to the Ports brand in Asia and Australia as well as the Tabi