TheBuzz
TheBuzz
Space, not a luau, for
year-old baby businessMakana Mother & Baby is anticipating a new arrival. Two new arrivals, actually.
The former store-without-a-store is a year old and will open in a permanent showroom in Moiliili tomorrow.
Its proprietor, whose official title is "president and mom," is also expecting her second child.
Former full-time public relations woman Deborah Sharkey left her position at PRWorks to start her upscale maternity clothing and accessory business in 2001. Beginning the weekend after Thanksgiving 2001 she rented space at Blaisdell Center two weekends a month because she didn't want to sign a lease.
"At first we were trying to avoid that," she said. "I would say the catalyst (for finding a permanent spot) was that three months ago on a Thursday night my husband hurt his back. When you're lugging 1,200 pounds of merchandise between your house and the showroom, it can be a problem."
Even when husband Jerry Linville is linebacker-sized. By day his heavy lifting is more cranial; he is the executive director of the Hawaii Council on Economic Education.
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Deborah Sharkey's business, Makana Mother & Baby, is opening a showroom in University Square, complete with a picture of Sharkey's 2-year-old son, Ian Makana Linville.
Linville has joked that his company title for the past year has been "husband and pack mule," he said.
The search for a permanent showroom led Sharkey and Linville to University Square where a stroller-friendly elevator will deliver customers to the third floor.
What was once office space has been transformed into a pink and blue showroom that will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
Makana will continue to offer its lines of upscale and professional maternity and nursing wear from manufacturers such as Japanese Weekend, Olian and Belly Basics, among others.
Obviously, whether a store is open two days a week or seven, the rent must still be paid. But the greater revenue potential from more traditional retail hours is not the company's priority, Sharkey said.
"The nice thing about the way we've looked at the business," she said, "is that we don't want the business to run us."
"In my mind we're a small market and (Makana) appeal(s) to an even smaller market or customer base," Sharkey said.
The two-day a week schedule reduces labor costs. "The primary labor is me," she said. "I can continue to be the main person who's running things."
The abbreviated retail schedule also leaves time for the one-woman public relations company, Makana Communications, which she launched in October.
"Being Chinese, we're sort of taught to work," she said.
Neither venture takes her too far from her primary job as a mom.
Sharkey's first son, Ian Makana Linville, was born in 2000. She started her business in 2001; started her own one-woman PR company and is moving into a permanent showroom in 2002 and will bring her second son into the world in 2003.
"I don't really know what were going to do in 2004 to top each preceding year," she said. "But we'll figure something out."
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com
