Doreen Choi has owned and operated Crystal Children & Teacher Supply since 1988.[/caption] Crystal Children & Teacher Supply owner Doreen Choi has made it a point to distinguish her store from other teacher supply stores by catering to parents instead of only teachers. To accomplish this, Choi and her staff researches and sells study material and resources for various standardized tests and entrance exams for students in pre-K through sixth grade. “We are very focused on researching what is available on the market,” Choi said. “Our testing is very specialized. Other stores send [customers] to us because they cannot answer the [parents’] questions.” Choi opened her supply store in Sugar Land in 1996 after launching the first location in Houston near Buffalo Speedway in 1988. As a former ESL teacher in China, Choi said most teacher supply stores do not provide enough educational resources for parents, much less welcome them. After 27 years in the educational business, Choi believes she has found her niche by focusing on student and parent needs. “Parents hardly have any resources,” she said. “When we first opened, our biggest challenge was attracting parents. We want to hold their hands and help them help their kids.” Choi said she helps parents by suggesting workbooks and educational resources, such as flashcards and various educational games, depending on a student’s needs. If parents are unable to work one-on-one with their children, Choi also offers private tutoring sessions catered to individual students. “[Sugar Land] is a suburb with professionals, and they see the importance of helping their kids grow,” Choi said. “Our parents in [Sugar Land] really want to be involved, and they want to invest in their children.” Although the supply store focuses on providing resources for parents and students, it also sells classroom supplies for teachers, such as grading books and planning books. “Teachers see us as a convenience store instead of a supply store,” Choi said. “When teachers need a lot of stuff, they will go to the other [supply] stores.” Nevertheless, as Crystal Children & Teacher Supply's customer base continues to grow, Choi said she wants to expand her services. However, with stores in Houston and in Sugar Land, Choi said she does not want to open a third location. Instead she said she wants to broaden the products she sells on the supply store’s website. “I still have a lot of products that I want to be on our website,” she said. “I want to—hopefully within a year’s time—serve our products the way I want them to be served online.”