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This family business has
By Cynthia Oi
survived changing economics
and customer tastes to mark its
100th anniversary this year
Star-BulletinTHE coconut-scented tourist lady from California declares the bright red-and-black jacket "just right, a happy happi coat." Store clerk Chie Spirz folds the garment, tucks it neatly into a bag and hands the woman her change with a smile.
"I remember you," the woman says to Spirz. "You waited on me last year. Eighteen years I've been coming to Hawaii and every year, every year, I come here. Since 1982, I've bought something at this store."
Her words represent all that Iida's stands for: customer service, reliability, quality merchandise and, "continuity," says company president Robert Iida. One hundred years of continuity.
In a time when online consumers buy goods represented in clusters of pixels, when stores sell an image rather than a product, Iida's may seem an anachronism. Still, as other businesses come and go like the trade winds, Iida's has endured -- through world wars, the Depression, statehood, the fall of island agriculture and the rise of tourism, the space age and into the era of technology.The family-owned Iida's is essentially a plantation store on a busy corner amid the ritz and glitz that Ala Moana Center has become.
Piles of chinaware weigh down wide platforms, lamps and Boy's Day carp dangle from the ceiling, framed prints and bamboo screens lean against the walls, cocktail parasols and toys surround a beam, and Buddha statues, jyuzu beads, incense and other religious objects sit on glassed-in shelves.
There are steamers, fans, masks, sword holders, yukata, bags, head bands, scarves, kitchen utensils, slicer blades, grills, swim shorts, umbrellas, jewelry, hanafuda cards, key chains and a Chiyonofuji Hakata doll.
A special audience
The basic inventory is little changed from the days when founder Suisan Matsukichi Iida realized that Japanese immigrants in Honolulu wanted goods from their home country.At the time, the market was clearly there for Iida's. These days, it may be a bit hazy.
"About 25 percent of the customers are tourists, but mostly people are local," Robert Iida says, sitting on a stool in a jam-packed back room.
He acknowledged that a good segment of customers are older people, nisei who still keep to the Japanese traditions. Iida tries to carry merchandise to draw younger shoppers, but the change seems hard on him.
A mention of a line of teen-oriented jewelry in the store's window brings a frown, but he quickly adjusts."Even if we serve the older age group, their children will remember us," he says hopefully, acknowledging the younger market.
Still, the store remains busy. "It's a struggle, but we keep up and we're still profitable," he says.
Beyond merchandise, he believes it is the quality of service that makes the business strong.
"Even the younger set still wants more attention than some stores give them," he said. "We wait on them, help them find what they want."
In Waikiki, by contrast, "you see neatly piled goods, well displayed, but no more the warmth."
"They just put the things out and let the customer decide. You buy what you want and go out."
The emphasis on service goes back to Robert's grandfather, who admonished him to pay attention to the customer.
All in the family
The Iida patriarch was in Osaka during World War II. When the city was bombed, he climbed on top of the building that held his home and business."During the air raid, he sat on the roof and said prayers. It wasn't hit. He was a tough old man," Robert says.
He was also a good businessman, with a successful chinaware enterprise in Osaka before he started Iida's.
"In Japan, in the old days, they used to use earthenware pots for tea on the trains," Robert says. "He was a maker of the pots and sold the pots to the train company. He made good money with that and then he came to Hawaii."
In celebrating Iida's centennial, Robert and his family aren't sure of the exact date of Iida's start. The first store was in Chinatown, opening just before the January 1900 fire that destroyed much of the district. Undaunted, Iida's founder reopened the store on Beretania Street, near Nuuanu.
In 1920, Robert's father, Koichi Iida, took over operations. When World War II began, Koichi was interned. Robert and his brother Richard were "still in grade school," so Tsuyoshi Nishimoto, who had married Robert's older sister, Yoshiko, stepped in.
"Mr. Nishimoto came and ran the business. He helped my father greatly." Robert bows his head in respect.
Nishimoto was a forward-looking man. When word came that a new shopping center was to be built, Nishimoto immediately made a bid for space. Ala Moana Center opened in 1959 and Iida's was there. It has remained at its high-traffic corner ever since. (In 1965, Iida's opened a second outlet on the makai side, but it was closed after 10 years.)Iida's was incorporated in 1951 with shares going to family members, some of whom work at the store or at the warehouse.
"It's truly a family business," says Warren Nishimoto, son of Tsuyoshi and Yoshiko. His brother, Clyde, is vice president. Robert's brother, Richard, was store manager from 1959 until 1975 and still comes in to help when needed. Others, like Warren, who is director of the University of Hawaii-Manoa Center for Oral History, and Robert's daughter, Shirley, an editorial clerk for the Star-Bulletin, work outside the business.
But both have put in hours at Iida's.
"When I was young, all I knew was the business," says Warren, whose first job was working in the warehouse.
"I remember (when Iida's was on Beretania) that the downtown merchants or whoever decided the stores would stay open until 9 p.m.," he says. The family worried about the employees. "So my mom would make bentos to take up to the store there so the workers and the family could have dinner."
In some stores, "the clerks are all mechanical," observed Robert. "They change so much. Here, you come back years later, you can talk to the sales clerk who helped you the last time. You become friends."
Amy Murai has worked at Iida's for 36 of her 75 years, one of 10 full-time and 17 part-time employees."Are you a senior citizen?" she asks a woman who is obviously of the older generation, "because we have a discount for senior citizens."
Later, she explains why she doesn't just give elderly people the discount. "They might be insulted. If you ask, they feel better -- maybe they don't look so old?"
Murai has no plans to retire soon.
"I tell Mr. Robert Iida, as long as I'm happy and you not mean to me, I don't mind working here. But if you mean to me I quit. He said, 'No, you won't quit until you're 88 years old and I'll be dead and so will you,'" she laughs.
As other long-time stores and businesses close, nostalgia thickens for the ones that remain.
Twentysomething Tedi Kam-Yahata has driven in from the North Shore to do some shopping in town this day.
In Iida's, she buys a keychain engraved with a rabbit that Murai says is, "Cute, yeah?"
"When I come out this side," Kam-Yahata says, "I stop by. "They have a lot of unusual, interesting things that you cannot find anywhere else."
She became a customer when she was in 7th grade. "I used to catch the bus to Ala Moana after school -- big deal, yeah? -- and this is one of the few remaining stores I remember coming into."
As she leaves, she calls back to Murai, "I hope you folks stay in business another hundred years!"
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