Alan Faiivae of Magnet Five-O at the Aloha Tower Marketplace shows some of the store's more popular food product magnets.
Photo by Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin

Whether it is selling magnets, petite dresses or fashionable bikinis, these small-shop owners are finding there's money to be made in filling voids left by the big outlets.

Jan Berman, chairwoman of the Retail Merchants of Hawaii, has been going out to retail centers for the past year and has noticed some changes.

"I sense a shifting going on in the players," Berman said. "It's a positive shift. There are a lot of new opportunities for people with special ideas because the big box stores can't satisfy that need for excitement.

"In the beginning it was very frightening (when discounters came to Hawaii) but now we're watching it level off. Certain centers go for the big stores and others want the excitement of the smaller stores."

Ala Moana Center, Ward Centre and Aloha Tower Marketplace are examples of retail centers that are generating excitement with smaller stores, Berman said.

A few years ago, Jonelle Okamura, 29, saw an opportunity in the need for petite clothing in Hawaii. But before she made the plunge with her Cinnamon Girl shop, she took trips to California, Japan, France and New York to study small retail outlets.

"There are not enough speciality, cute outlets in Hawaii," Okamura said. "We have rayon, flowing dresses with floral prints. All dresses are made locally. They are very summery. There are a lot of mother-daughter matching dresses."

For Okamura, it all started with her sewing experience as a young girl and later selling at craft fairs.

"I was going to do wholesale (with the dresses) but I went straight into retail because I wanted to create the atmosphere (for marketing)," she said.

Okamura, a graduate in sociology from the University of Hawaii, only took one continuing education course in business but talked to many people about retailing.

Chiara McGowan, left, and her sister, Sherilyn, browse at swimsuits offered at Splash Hawaii at the Ala Moana Center.
Photo by Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin

Business at Cinnamon Girl is divided about 50-50 between local shoppers and tourists, especially the Japanese, she said.

Tourists from Japan are often already familiar with name Splash Hawaii before coming to that retailer's 784-square-foot shop in Ala Moana Center.

"We ... have our Splash Hawaii swimwear in 130 locations in Japan (department stores and specialty stores)," said co-owner Gary McCarty, 39, who got into retailing with his Kailua High School buddy Dennis Fallas, 40.

Their start goes back to the 1970s. After both worked seven years for the Jean's Fate store, they started Blue Jeans 'N Bikinis on Kapiolani Boulevard in 1980 with less than $30,000. Four years later, they bought out their competitor, the Splash shop in Waikiki.

"Back in the 1970s, when we were managing Jean's Fate, we saw the opportunity for blue denim and the need for fashionable swimwear," McCarty said. "It was the beginning of the high cut bikini. This (denim and bikinis) remains our core business today."

McCarty and Fallas continue as buyers for their two shops, and much of the swimwear line is manufactured in Hawaii through the Splash Hawaii affiliate company Out of the Blue.

The Ala Moana Center location for Splash Hawaii's small shop - near the food court - is a gold mine, they say.

"We had the right product at the right place at the right time," McCarty said. "The first year we did 200 percent of our projections and we've gone up more than 20 percent in each of the last three years."

It took a bank loan of about $150,000 to open the Splash Hawaii store in 1987, but McCarty figures it would take about $200,000 today.

"It's much harder to get started now but I don't believe all the niches (for new business) have been filled," McCarty said.

The owners of the Magnet Five-O shop found their niche on that empty space on your refrigerator door.

The 1,200-square-foot store at Aloha Tower Marketplace has 100,000 refrigerator-type magnets of all styles and themes, many of them lining the shop's corrugated sheet-metal walls.

The magnets - from cartoon characters to family crests - cost anywhere from 99 cents to $19.99, making them an inexpensive gift for tourists to bring back to friends. About 70 percent of the sales go to Japanese visitors, said Karen Kirschling, store manager.

The magnets are manufactured all over the world, some by special order from store owners, Margaret Majua and Dave MacIntosh of Oakland, Calif. They have several Hawaii silent partners in the MMH Partners Ltd., which operates the local store.

"The magnets idea started when Mrs. Majua had a gift store on Pier 39 in San Francisco and found out that the magnets sold really well," Kirschling said.

In 1985, she opened the Magnet P.I. store in a 86-foot-high elevator shaft. MacIntosh joined the team in 1989 and together they have opened Magnet Maximus, Star Magnet and The Great Wall of Magnets in Las Vegas and Magnet Max in San Diego. Another store on Union Square in San Francisco is opening this month, and more store openings are tentatively planned for Hawaii by the end of the year, Kirschling said.

How many magnets do shoppers buy? "We've had $500 and $600 orders," Kirschling said. "One teacher bought a magnet for each student and spent $500."