In 1976, Rick and Ruth Huang each brought a suitcase full of their belongings and boarded a DC-8 in Taipei. Focused on their final destination in America, they would first need to make stops in Hong Kong and Honolulu. With little more to their name than the suitcases which bore them, they eventually settled in Dallas, Texas. While Rick worked his days as a busboy in a local Chinese restaurant and Ruth as an administrative assistant at Southwestern Medical School, they both spent their evenings starting a business that would eventually become Huang Acrylic in 1978.