Few things are as inextricably tied to Hawaiʻi’s culture as a fragrant and colorful lei. They’re stacked high on the shoulders of graduates, slipped over the necks of wide-eyed visitors, or draped on community leaders at official events.  

Lei making has a rich and vibrant history across the Islands. Yet over recent decades, the bulk of the lei-making industry has moved offshore, to foreign lands where growers and lei-makers string flowers into strands and sell them back cheaply to us here in Hawai’i. 

Now, the Lei Poinaʻole Project hopes to turn that around. The project created by the nonprofit BEHawaiʻi aims to revitalize and strengthen the local lei industry through community engagement and advocacy. The main mission of the group is to uplift local flower growers and lei makers to preserve the traditions of lei in Hawaiʻi. 

Launched three years ago, the program has engaged propagators on each of the main islands in hopes of building pilot projects into a statewide network of flower growers, lei-makers and vendors that can flourish as it did in the past.  

“You think about Hawaiʻi, you think about a lei,” says Brook Lee, secretary of BEHawaiʻi, who helped focus the nonprofit’s attention on the needs of struggling lei flower growers and lei makers.  

So far, the Lei Poinaʻole Project has connected with 26 existing growers, 22 new growers and 7 propagators. The goal is not just to support the big farmers, but small and medium-sized growers so that a cottage industry can thrive once again.

Sylvia Hussey

“The objective of the project at the end is to have the Lei Poinaʻole Coalition,” adds BEHawai‘i Executive Director Sylvia Hussey. “The lei project is a mechanism in which to form the coalition” that will carry on even after initial startup efforts cease. 

Lee remembers the idea for the Project stemmed from a conversation she had with a lei store owner who told her in 2020 that the lei industry was in decline and needed help. That conversation stuck with her, and when BEHawaiʻi began considering projects to fund, the memory resurfaced. The idea to support a statewide lei network blossomed. 

Lee explains: “There are a lot of people in the community who just didn’t have a touchpoint or a place, or the space, to be able to think about the idea of stewarding this thing, because it’s farm to table, which is important, but that has been the whole sort of agricultural space here in Hawaiʻi for a very long time. And it’s necessary, but we’re just trying to follow in their footsteps and expand the conversation around.” 

In 2022, the group was awarded a three-year grant from the Federal Administration for Native Americans. The grant supported eight existing and 16 new farmers across the state. While the group knew the grant couldn’t solve the problem in just a few years, it helped them start the conversations needed to build the coalition.  

Lee says they aim to help growers who have been quietly maintaining but are at a breaking point and need support. Besides foreign competitors, farmers are facing agricultural diseases and beetle infestations that are devastating long-established farms. When they contacted the USDA for help, she says, some farmers said their concerns were dismissed and they were told to simply burn the trees. 

“We’re hoping to be able to set people up, because we can’t fund it forever, but we wanted to just sort of try to piece it into a way that they can know that they’re certain CTHAR will help,” Lee says, referring to the UH Mānoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. 

CTHAR has been holding workshops to teach people how to plant certain flowers. Experts take the participants on a walking tour of their properties to assess what their problems may be or what they should focus on.  

After the assessments, some farms are encouraged to propagate flowers in locations that have suitable growing conditions.  

Meanwhile, the Lei Poinaʻole Project has been expanding connections between lei-making families and farmers. They’ve had to overcome obstacles, too, including some growers who were hesitant about sharing details about their sites and growing practices.   

“One of the first things we explain about the project is that the project takes none of the production. We just want to help them, if it’s more plants, if it is knowledge, pest control,” Hussey says. Their focus, she says, is: “How can we help them keep all of their production and how they want to distribute that, whether it’s commercially or [through] family.” 

The Project representatives also ask growers how the group can support them through policy changes or by assisting with general practices. Everyone in Hawaiʻi farms differently, Lee says, and each person will favor certain flowers that are culturally based and close to peoples’ ohana or have a special connection to wherever they’re living. 

“A lot of times they don’t like it when people come in and try to tell them how to do something that they are doing for a very long time, there’s some cultural sensitivity around it, right?” Lee says. “Because, of course, they should know how to do it. They’ve been doing it for generations. Yeah, that’s their kuleana. And no one’s here to tell you that your kuleana is wrong or bad. You’ve been doing it. You’ve got the proof. The boots are on the ground.” 

While respecting current practices, Hussey says the farmers in the program also share their knowledge with the next generation and in the process gain a scientific grounding in how best to grow their flowers.

Insight from a New Grower  

The propagation site on Hawaiʻi Island may be furthest along among the pilot projects. It is coordinated by David Fuertes, executive director of the nonprofit Kahua Paʻa Mua. On a five-acre property in the North Kohala community of Kapaʻau, Fuertes has cuttings of a diverse range of flowering plants that, once they sprout roots, are distributed to five families to plant on their own land. 

Flower varieties in the mix include crown flower, pikake, puakenikeni, ʻākulikuli, ʻōlena as well as more common plumeria and orchids. 

Under a makeshift greenhouse, a watering system emits a spray of water for 20 seconds every hour, keeping the plants moist. The team meets regularly to discuss best practices for dipping the cutting stems into homemade root hormone mixtures that enhance root growth. They take measurements and share data so they can replicate the results that are most favorable. 

The first batch of cuttings have been transplanted, and flowers should be ready within a matter of months. 

“The families will supply local lei makers, and they can make their own lei as well,” said Fuertes. “It’s a community-based economic development program. After the initial group of growers are established, we can expand to the next generation of families.” 

Fuertes has a special connection to lei making. His late sister, Nancy Fuertes Ueno, was an award-winning lei maker on Kauaʻi. 

On the one-year anniversary of her death in September last year, Fuertes inaugurated the Aunty Nancy Lei Aloha Garden on his land in her memory in hopes of preserving the art of lei-making. 

At the launch ceremony, Fuertes told a gathering of about 100 people that while the vast majority of lei makers’ flowers come to Hawaiʻi from foreign countries, he hopes this program will help rekindle an interest in lei-making in the Islands. 

“Here in Kohala, we want to make the change. If we can get everybody to grow flowers and get farmers switching or intercropping with flower lei, we can bring the price down for lei,” he said.  

In his blessing to dedicate the site, Kahu Kealoha Sugiyama explained the social and spiritual role of lei. 

“When you pick a flower, it’s a memory between you and the receiver,” Sugiyama explained. “It starts out with one memory, one flower, and you keep adding and adding until the lei is completed. And what was just a single memory, now it becomes a story, a story between you and the lei maker. That story is precious.” 

When Hussey enlisted Fuertes to join the state-wide effort, she already knew his background — he had been her former high school teacher. 

“I was born and raised in Kohala. I’m a Kohala high school graduate, and so when we were looking for a propagation site in Kohala, there was no question who it needed to be. It would be my former ag teacher from high school who has a farm,” Hussey says. “And that’s an example of leveraging relationships to be able to find in the community those propagator sites.” 

Fuertes remembers Hussey developed an early interest in agriculture when she was one of his students.  

He said he recalls Hussey started a paʻu unit in Kohala, the ceremonial equestrian groups that ride in parades, with both the horses and female riders adorned with elaborate lei displays. 

“That was one of her first involvements with lei back in high school,” Fuertes says. 

History of Lei in Hawaiʻi 

Lei making traces back to the early Polynesian settlers in Hawaiʻi, and besides the decorative appeal, lei also served as a tribute to the gods and in some cases signified social rank in society.  

Early lei included nuts, shells and bones as well as a variety of plants and flowers. The maile lei, an open string lei woven with fragrant leaves from vines that grow in cool mountain forests, is considered among the most cherished types of lei. 

Demand for maile lei has soared in conjunction with official events and celebrations. And with the arrival of tourists, and the preference for fragrant plumeria and other brightly colored flowers, lei making became a cottage industry across the islands. 

“So what we have heard from conversations from lei sellers is that the supply is getting harder and harder to get and everybody knows, just by experience, maile as an example right there, very rarely can you get a maile of Big Island, maile of Kauaʻi, fresh maile. It’s being replaced by ti leaf,” Hussey says. 

Different lei carry different meanings with the color, flower and occasion. The maile lei was once revered by aliʻi and is given as a sign of love, respect or a blessing. 

“One of the differentiators is that it is not the demand side of lei,” she says. “There will always be a demand. It’s on the growing side and the mitigating [efforts] helping more growers there, and anybody, not just commercial growers, but family growers, school growers, backyard growers, more lei flower growers.” 

Matching Price with Value 

Another goal of the project is to change consumers’ understanding of how much labor goes into lei. More than just its price, lei hold the spirit of the farmers and those who sewed it together.   

“We know that monetizing or valuing lei is not just in a price point,” Hussey says. “We all know family members at a wedding, even graduation or Mother’s Day, that someone has given you a lei, that they have grown, they have sewn themselves, is worth so much more than when you purchase.   

“And that also influences the price point. People complain, ʻOh, the pikake is $15 a strand. My gosh, if you knew how much effort it was to grow that pikake and how valuable, you wouldn’t complain. You would value and mahalo the lei seller and the lei grower for that value.”  

The Lei Poinaʻole Project is seeking help to quantify the financial importance of lei in Hawaiʻi, starting with a baseline estimate of current local production. 

Every island has its own relationship to lei making and sewing. Oʻahu has lei stands at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport and many lei shops on Maunakea Street in Chinatown.  

One shop in Chinatown is the family-owned Lin’s Lei Shop.  

Manager Tony Ngyuen says that it is difficult to measure how much work goes into a lei since everything is handmade. Some flowers have a special way to be plucked and processed, and can be sewn in different ways. The cost of the lei reflects the input of farmers as well.   

The most popular lei are usually the white fragrant flowers like pikake, puakenikeni, ginger and tuberose. Ngyuen explains that when picked, tuberose has a brownish tint on the outside, so it is cleaned to be white and peeled to be used in lei.  

Lin’s Lei Shop purchases pre-made orchid flower lei from Thailand since the labor is cheaper and they sell for less.  

“They create a product that is long-lasting and economical,” Ngyuen says. “It makes sense, and it provides a strong supply for the demand here.” 

One pre-made orchid lei in the shop’s lineup, already made in Thailand, is the famed Christina style lei. The Christina lei was designed in 1990 by Beth Lopez and created to honor the memory of her daughter Christina who died from lupus when she was 22. The design uses a needle and thread to sew together over 500 orchid centers. 

“Imagine the amount of work involved to make this,” says Ngyuen. “They just take a single petal from a single flower, and they create this,” he said.  

Some orchid lei have a negative reputation for being cheap or imported, but Hawaiʻi Island used to have its own honohono orchid that was specially farmed.  

 “We don’t want people to get a bad rep that lei orchids are bad, like orchids are part of our history and our culture as Hawaiian people,” Lee of BEHawaiʻi says. “But these are a different type of orchid that are mass produced in Thailand brought in by the pounds of loads.”  

Other than the orchid lei, Ngyuen says that all of the other lei he sells are handmade in Hawaiʻi, and in the back of their Maunakea Street store, family members can be seen making lei. They get their flowers from multiple farms and hobbyists across Hawaiʻi. 

While most lei are made in-store, sometimes they purchase pre–made lei from people who have trees in their backyards. Ngyuen pointed out a traditional lei made from hala, the fruit of the pandanus tree, that was made by a recreational lei maker. He said that it’s an older style of lei that isn’t usually sold anymore. 

Many lei shops, including Lin’s Lei Shop, sell flowers and lei to the mainland for graduations and other celebrations.  

“It seems like the lei culture is spreading,” he says. “So now, especially on the West Coast, it’s very common for people to receive lei for graduation. The whole West Coast, right from Washington to California, they all use lei, I think it’s good. Do I have a problem with them selling at Costco? No, not really.” 

“Support local if you can,” he says. “But other than that, enjoy a lei, enjoy the craftsmanship, enjoy the artistry. And yeah, support the industry.” 

That was the unorthodox prescription the keynote speaker offered to nearly 500 attendees at the Hawaii Business Leadership Conference at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Williams, a globally recognized expert on innovation, urged executives to move beyond their fixation on ROI — return on investment.

“Equally as important, perhaps more important these days, is return on learning,” Williams said at the conference in late July. “Every organization in America needs to accelerate their rate of learning. If you can learn at the pace of change, you have an advantage. But if your learning falls below the pace of change, you fall further and further behind. And that’s where we get into real trouble.

“So in order to accelerate the rate of learning, you need waste.”

The author of “Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business” cited a litany of companies that went bankrupt or lost their edge because they failed to keep innovating.

Williams said so-called “disruptive thinking” among employees leads to uncertain results, and not all ideas need to be implemented right away, or ever.

“But you’ve got to break the cycle of incremental thinking,” the idea that today’s successful ideas will continue to serve you well into the future.

In an interview after his speech, Williams expanded upon the idea.

“Disruptive ideas, if the advantages are clear, they’re no longer high risk,” Williams said. “They’re really risking the thinking time, and that’s a matter of priorities.

“I think of different currencies in a business. We often think of money as the main currency, but there are different currencies. I want businesses to see ideas as their most valuable currency.”

Williams challenged attendees to go back to their companies after the conference and to encourage all of their employees to start rethinking everything about their businesses.

“If you don’t have new ideas, you don’t innovate, you can’t grow,” explained Williams who is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business. “Particularly in mature economies like the U.S., they’ve got to get themselves in a position where they’ve got more ideas to spend than their competitors.

“That means as circumstances change, we’ve got more options. We can do A, B, C, D or E depending on how circumstances change, so we’ve got better optionality than our competitors.”

Williams insists no new technology needs to be invented for companies to thrive and grow.

“My message is everyone in the organization needs to have a comfortable fluency moving between the core business and introducing new business ideas,” Williams says. “That’s why I talk about discourse. It’s not the device that’s important, it’s the discourse.”

“Ideas beget ideas,” he says.

So how does a guy who tells others to endlessly innovate keep his own creative juices flowing? After all, Williams has more than 30 patents for product designs and is constantly pushing his mantra — innovate or perish.

He scoffs at the idea of waiting for some creative bolt of lightning to spring from casual imagining.

“I’m a big believer in deliberate creativity,” Williams says. “I don’t believe in shooting water pistols and getting people to take off ties and sit on bean bags. It’s exercising a muscle.”

He has recently gotten back in touch with a creative outlet he pursued when he was younger: drumming.

“I find that really helps with creativity,” Williams says, adding: “It has actually engaged different parts of the brain. … I think my aspiration is to be a jazz musician at some point. Jazz has a lot to do with creativity and improvisation.”

A year of corporate profits in Hawai‘i was overshadowed by a massive loss at Hawaiian Electric Industries, parent of the utility at the center of litigation over the deadly Lahaina wildfire that killed 102 people in August 2023.

Once among the state’s most profitable companies, Hawaiian Electric reported a more than $1.42 billion loss in 2024 – driven largely by a $4.04 billion wildfire settlement with thousands of Maui residents and businesses.

Plaintiffs alleged the utility failed to shut off power lines despite high-wind warnings that preceded the fire. The company, which supplies electricity to about 95% of Hawai‘i’s population, agreed to pay nearly half the settlement amount.

The state, Maui County and other defendants, including Kamehameha Schools, West Maui Land Co., Hawaiian Telcom and Spectrum/Charter Communications, also agreed to contribute to the settlement.

Hawaiian Electric’s 2024 loss was greater than the combined total annual profits tallied by 53 companies and organizations in the state during the same period, according to the annual ranking by Hawaii Business Magazine of the most profitable companies in the Islands. The list includes all the local companies whose data is publicly available or was submitted to us.

Hawaiian Electric president and CEO Scott Seu said in the company’s annual report that the Hawai‘i Supreme Court ruling earlier this year to allow settlement funds to be released helped “to move the settlement forward and provide more clarity for our company’s path toward reestablishing financial stability.”

The amount of Hawaiian Electric’s loss was also seven times the size of the company’s prior year profit of nearly $200 million.

To help pay for its portion of the settlement, Hawaiian Electric sold 90% of its stake in American Savings Bank to independent investors for $405 million in cash.

“Importantly, the proceeds from this transaction support our efforts to rebuild our financial strength while creating flexibility for how we finance Maui wildfire-related obligations and key utility initiatives, such as wildfire risk reduction,” Seu told shareholders.

“We are deeply committed to advancing our wildfire mitigation efforts, and since launching an expanded wildfire safety strategy in the wake of the Maui wildfires, Hawaiian Electric has rapidly advanced efforts to reduce the risk of wildfires ignited by its equipment.”

“It’s a meditative practice. Putting beads on the string, we have to slow down and focus. We get to put ourselves into that flow type of state. So that’s a huge benefit,” Brendan Barry says.

Located in Kaimukī, Bead It! stocks hundreds of jewelry-making materials and helps patrons create their own unique pieces. On a visit to the store, I carefully selected my beads and then the staff helped me create my charm bracelet.

Bead It! also offers classes that teach the fundamentals of jewelry-making, including wiring, knotting, drilling, bezeling and soldering. Jill Barry says students “always leave with a finished product.”

Brendan Barry says his favorite moments are right when a piece is completed, when he sees customers “light up with the success of their own creation.”

bead-it-hawaii.myshopify.com

“We’re here to be exemplary models of what responsible tourism can be, what it looks like, and what it is when it’s grown straight from the community we were born in,” says Jacob Kahiapo, co-founder and director of operations.

“Keeping your people and community first in mind, and then allowing people to visit based on that, I believe is really the best way to approach any tourism business.”

The company and its mission were partly inspired by a personal tragedy: the unexpected death of Kahiapo’s close friend Mana.

“That made me realize that not every day can be taken for granted, and every decision you make could be your last. I couldn’t just sit back; I had to step up to the plate and do my best to follow what I thought was right,” he says.

Mana is one of the few words used across all Polynesia, whether you’re in New Zealand, Tahiti, Samoa or Hawai‘i, and holding the same meaning: an unseen and supernatural power that permeates the universe and that we all feel within us. “That’s something that we try to exemplify on all of our charters,” Kahiapo says.

The company has 22 captains, crew members and support personnel and three vessels – the Manakahi, Hilinai and Lanakila – based in Waikīkī and Ko Olina. Lanakila can carry up to six guests, and the other two boats can carry up to 10, says Mash Hatae, co-founder and director of sales and marketing. The trips can include snorkeling, sightseeing, whale and dolphin watching, sailing and fishing.

The small size of each tour group allows for a “genuine, authentic experience, something more personalized and intimate for the people that we meet,” Kahiapo says.

“We make sure that our efforts here, whether through our employees or our givebacks, positively affect our community, rather than just being a business on the water that makes money.”

That means offering metal cups instead of plastic, holding an annual beach cleanup, and giving back to nonprofits and schools through vouchers and donations, among other initiatives, Hatae says.

“The storytelling and knowledge that our team has about every coastline we operate on, whether it’s from Waikīkī or Ko Olina, is passed down from myself and generations before me, as well as cultural practitioners in the area. Whether it’s about Mount Ka‘ala and why it’s flat [at the top], or about Polihua and the navigation that took place there, or even about Waikīkī and why it’s so segmented, the stories behind these places are deeply cultural,” Kahiapo says.

Five years later, she moved into a much bigger space, her current location on Hekili Street in Kailua, across from Foodland. When you walk into her shop, it’s like entering a country garden, with wisteria hanging from the ceiling and floral scents everywhere.

Akamine says she chose Picket Fence Florist as the name of her shop because she loves country gardens and the homespun feel of picket fences. She says she wanted a “nice country place to have friends over” and was inspired by her grandmother who taught ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging flowers.

Her daughter, Asa Voss, along with her other staff – Douglas Scheer, Howard Souza and Kathy Piimauna – have been with Akamine for over three decades.

She says she works with over 30 vendors, some of whom are retirees who sell their own backyard plants. She is currently grieving the death of the “Pīkake Man,” who supplied her pīkake for many years.

Akamine says she tries to use as many locally grown Hawai‘i plants as possible but in recent years has had to get other flowers, like roses, from places such as Ecuador, Thailand and California. She credits other Kailua florists for their support in acquiring flowers for large orders. The different shops “help each other out on a regular basis.”

“The people of Kailua love leis,” Akamine says as she proudly shows me a bright orange ‘ilima lei made with more than 700 flowers. In fact, a third of Picket Fence’s business is creating lei.

Akamine recalls her first job, at age 19; she worked with Greeters of Hawai‘i, handing lei to tourists at the airport. “In those days, you could go up to people as they got off the tarmac.”

After half a century in the floral business, Akamine’s connection to her customers is what keeps her going. “You’re involved with births, graduations, weddings, people coming and leaving. We’re doing a lot of events, so over the years our customers became friends.”

And she’s found many ways to say thank you to her customers and to bring the community together. For instance, for 10 years on “Good Neighbor Day,” Picket Fence would give away a dozen roses on condition that “you keep just one and give 11 away.”

She loves “the immediate gratification” of seeing how her flowers light up faces and places. “This is a very emotional business,” she says.

And it’s a business that keeps evolving. Akamine hands me some of her latest “hits” – big coffee-colored roses. They don’t smell like coffee but they do smell amazing.

The company was created by Yoshiharu Hirota, Fred Nagasawa and Roy Yamashiroya, who took over a defunct print shop on Sheridan Street in Honolulu. In December 2004, Roy Yamashiroya sold the company to his son Dean and five employees. After Dean’s death in 2012, his widow, Kathy, and daughter Jodie took over the business.

Jodie Yamashiroya says the company’s mission has remained the same through the years: to provide outstanding service and high-quality printing at competitive prices.

“We’re not just in sales, we’re consultants as well. We work with our customers and marketing departments to produce the best product that will fit the customer’s needs,” she says.

“The people behind this company are family. We’ve had employees here for 40-plus years, most of whom I grew up around. And so when my dad passed, my mom and I had to jump in.”

One of those long-term employees is Bruce Inouye, who started about 25 years ago as a production worker and worked closely with Dean Yamashiroya. Now he’s VP and a key decision-maker for the company.

“The two of us never worked with my husband but Bruce did. His expertise impacts everything we do,” says Kathy Yamashiroya.

Service Printers has kept evolving to meet challenges that have driven many other printing companies out of business.

“Staying relevant is tough with everything going digital. The equipment is expensive, and with Hawai‘i’s small economy, many print shops have closed since I started. We’re just grateful to still be here,” Jodie Yamashiroya says.

Sustainability helps guide the company, which uses paper partly made from recycled materials and soy-based inks.

And now all the equipment is in a new location. Service Printers Hawaii had been located on Dillingham Boulevard for most of the past six decades, but the rail project spurred a move to a “bigger, brighter” location on Iwaena Street in ‘Aiea, says Jodie Yamashiroya.

In those cases, “It should be about what’s best for the child, and that can be challenging,” says Bennett, founder and lead mediator at Family Mediation Hawaii in Honolulu.

Mediation can untangle complicated custody issues and help couples avoid costly and lengthy court trials.

“People still think they need to lawyer up and protect themselves. But mediation can be more effective because we’re hearing both, not just one side of the story,” Bennett says. “The process is about building trust and rapport and helping clients understand you want them to have a better outcome.”

Born and raised in Nu‘uanu Valley, Bennett is a lawyer, holds a master’s degree in social work from UH Mānoa and has three children. She has taught mediation and regularly mediated for the Hawai‘i Family Court of the First Circuit’s O‘ahu Child Welfare Mediation Program at the Ronald T.Y. Moon Judiciary Complex in Kapolei. That experience, she says, helps her understand the human dynamics in divorce and child custody situations.

Six years ago, Bennett launched her Family Mediation Hawaii business; since then, she’s added six mediators, all lawyers who know their way around a courtroom. They also understand the dynamics of child development, and how issues like substance abuse and power imbalances can play out during a divorce. And as mediators, she says, they are practiced at remaining neutral.

Additionally, comments made in court are available to the public, whereas mediation is a confidential process in which the two parties control the outcome.

Family Mediation Hawaii bills by the hour. “People want to know when is it going to be done and how much it’s going to cost. I say, ‘It depends on how much you fight.’ ”

Most of the company’s clients seek uncontested divorces, and most of the cases are referred to mediation by the court. This means they never step foot in a courtroom; instead, a Family Court judge signs off on their paperwork and enters the divorce decree.

Bennett says people’s behavior runs the gamut, from parents fleeing the country with a child to those who amiably try to sort out school schedules and co-parenting during the holidays.

“We know how kids of different ages deal with separation,” she says. “There’s definitely a place for the legal system, but we can make things happen faster. Even if it’s a partial decision, like who pays for school, it’s going to make the trial go a heck of a lot faster.”

“We won’t try to sell something that isn’t necessary, and we treat each customer as if they were our own family. Our dad, Alan, spends the time talking and answering whatever questions the customers have,” says VP Laurie Marcouiller.

“He will break it down to terms they can understand instead of mechanic verbiage. If we have younger customers, he will talk to their parents and explain to them so everyone is on the same page.”

It’s also that now rare kind of auto repair shop: one that also has gas pumps.

Marcouiller says Kaimuki Auto Repair can provide excellent service because of its employees, some of whom have been with the company for 20 years or more.

“It’s not easy working here since we are usually pretty busy and it’s always fast-paced. Not a lot of people can work as hard and efficiently as our current employees do,” she says, adding that others who could not keep up have left.

Kaimuki Auto Repair has been around for 54 years and Marcouiller hopes it’s open for many more.

“Our grandpa took over the service station in 1971 and our dad was working as a mechanic and eventually took it over when our grandpa passed away. Being a small, multigenerational business, we have seen many generations of customers as well,” Marcouiller says. “Our customers are so loyal and many of them are just like family. We’ve heard many stories from the time our grandpa was alive, which is always nice to hear.”

“It’s resort, it’s fun, it’s colorful,” Rochlen says. “There’s a certain extra intelligence and intensity of color and brush-strokes that we screen print onto our fabric, which makes a Jams print so recognizable. … The way we lay out the art is very intentional, so that it looks the best.”

Jams World is a family-run clothing brand; it opened its first store in the Islands – Surf Line Hawai‘i – in 1964. Founder Dave Rochlen, Heather’s father-in-law, began his line of surf-friendly clothing by asking his wife, Keanuenue Ka‘eo, to cut a pair of pajama pants into shorts.

“And so we came up with the word ‘Jams,’ short for pajamas,” Heather Rochlen says. “And that’s our trademark.”

Jams World is run today by Dave’s son and Heather’s husband, Pua Rochlen, who continues his father’s love for curating textiles from around the world and transforming them into clothing for any occasion: from kimono robes to blazers to Original Jams shorts.

“There’s something for everybody in the collection,” says Heather Rochlen. “[We] keep the silhouettes super simple but flattering.”

Six Jams World stores are spread across the state, with three on Hawai‘i Island, one on Kaua‘i and two on O‘ahu, including the factory store in Kalihi, where customers can look through a window into the factory while shopping.

“People love that you can see some of our artwork and collections from over the years,” Heather Rochlen says.

Retail sales account for about 50% of transactions, online about 35% and wholesale 15%. Jams World has 44 employees and, according to Heather Rochlen, a very low staff turnover rate.

Jams World supports local causes including Make-A-Wish Hawaii, the Hawai‘i Foodbank, the Hawaiian Humane Society, the Legacy Reef Foundation and the American Red Cross. In each collection, a piece is dedicated to a foundation, and a portion of proceeds goes straight to them, Heather Rochlen says.