DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM
The James Campbell Building is soon to be home to a new store for Fisher Hawaii.
New store Fisher Hawaii Inc., known for more than 70 years as an office-supply business, is about to plunge into the heart of the downtown Honolulu business district with a new store.
for Fisher
By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.comThe company is expecting a lot of walk-in business at the makai-Ewa corner of Hotel Street and Fort Street Mall and is standing by to offer, for the first time, hand delivery of hefty items to offices in the neighborhood.
If an office-supplies buyer walks into the new store and buys boxes of printing paper or other heavy items, Fisher will say: "Leave it there. We'll pack it up. Give us an hour and we'll get it to you," said Tom Hallaman, retail group manager of Fisher Hawaii Inc.
The company hopes to get the 7,000-square-foot store open in December but there are some details to be worked out, Hallaman said.
Fisher has seen years of heavy competition from mainland discount suppliers, such as Office Depot and, right next to its Kakaako headquarters, Office Max.
But Fisher is confident it has equaled or bettered the competition and still provides more items at better prices then the big guns from the mainland, Hallaman said.
Fisher studies all the competitors' prices and says that as long as the customer can show it is exactly the same item, Fisher will beat the others' price, Hallaman said.
In the aftermath of the arrival of the big boxes in 1995, Fisher Hawaii saw its annual sales drop by $1 million. But in 2001 its sales hit a five-year record and there will be another record this year and next, Hallaman said.
He said the new store will be open six days a week and maybe Sundays too, because there are lots of home goods, such as batteries, flashlights, watches and backpacks that sell when offices are closed.
The new store will enter an already discount-oriented neighborhood. Price Busters opens this month in location diagonally across from the new Fisher store, where there was a deep-discount retailer and, makai along the mall, a Burger King.
Ross Dress for Less is a few yards away. Next there is Longs Drugs and Payless Shoes. What this adds up to, say Hallaman and Price Busters chief Beth Tom, is a lot of discounting in a small area.
It also is a huge pedestrian junction for people passing through from Leeward and Windward Oahu to town, or heading between Kalihi and Waikiki. By itself, that is good business, the retailers say, but Fisher Hawaii and Price Busters are both looking at big business from offices in their immediate area. "Looking at all the foot traffic in that place, all the discounters, Longs and Payless and us, it's kind of interesting," Hallaman said.
The lease was arranged by Grubb & Ellis/CBI Inc., representing the building owner, a wholly owned affiliate of the Estate of James Campbell.
It took more than a year to work out, Hallaman said.
The store isn't finished yet, he said, but the plan is to have a basement showroom for Allsteel. The national office furniture and fixtures business has partnered with Fisher Hawaii for years and works on contracts with buyers of custom-designed systems.
Hallaman said Fisher's present downtown store, on Alakea Street, is unable to carry the thousands of items it runs in its detailed advertising inserts. But the new store will carry a $1 million inventory with almost all of Fisher's advertised items. The future of the Alakea Street outlet has yet to be decided.
Fisher Hawaii's 50,000 square feet of wholesale-retail space at Cooke and Pohukaina Streets remains. It still has pens ranging from a few cents to a few thousand dollars.
The company began in 1929 as Multigraphy, List & Letter Co., an office equipment and printing firm. In 1933, Geoffrey C. Fisher and Hy Hollaway bought the company and named it Fisher Corp.
It went through some ownership changes, including part-ownership by employees. The Ronald Ho family bought it in 1978 and kept the name, Fisher Hawaii.
