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TheBuzz Erika Engle |
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Hilo Hattie cutter Yao Wei Yang lays out fabric before feeding the stack into a computer-controlled cutting machine. Dozens of layers of fabric are cut simultaneously, enabling Hilo Hattie to quickly generate the same design in a wide variety of patterns.
After 4 decades of selling bright prints,
Hilo Hattie has more than Hilo hoppin'Hawaii-made products find niche A visitor from Wisconsin had no intention of buying an aloha shirt.
Wearing it at home would be like boasting, "Hey! I've been there," Harold Williams said, his Midwestern modesty prohibiting such garmental glorification -- even though he'd saved up for years to bring his wife here.
That was the early 1970s.
During his most recent trip to New York, Hilo Hattie President and Chief Executive Officer Paul de Ville was "the only guy wearing a suit," he said.
It may have been Tom Selleck on "Magnum PI" that freed the aloha shirt from its backyard barbecue big house for mainlanders. It may have been a lot of other factors.
Whatever spread the popularity of aloha-print garb, it has meant success for many isle retailers, including the company that started out with two people as Kaluna Hawaii Sportswear and is now known as Hilo Hattie.
The store is 40 years old and has 500 employees in eight stores in Hawaii and five on the mainland. While 90 percent of its sales are to visitors, it has doubled its sales to kamaaina in the past two years. Overall 2002 sales were more than $64 million. The company expects to end this year at $67 million, de Ville said.
Sales stream through the company's 80,000-square-foot flagship store at 700 N. Nimitz Highway, through telephone orders and via www.hilohattie.com, which logged 23,000 sales transactions last year.
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An assortment of Hilo Hattie products.
Hilo Hattie's e-commerce division, begun in 1996, is profitable, but didn't start out that way.
"There's a big learning curve" for anyone starting out in e-commerce, de Ville said. The company is able to stock inventory for the store and the Web site at the Nimitz store, an advantage de Ville expects it will eventually outgrow. The e-commerce division has grown in part due to selling agreements with Amazon.com and others, he said.
But there was a long period -- years -- during which local people wouldn't dream of buying clothing from Hilo Hattie. The loud prints were for tourists.
Pomare officials knew residents were spending a lot of money on clothing and about three years ago decided it wanted in on the market share, said de Ville. It had to come up with fabric and clothing designs local people wanted and used them to win back their business. Hilo Hattie has since won several readers' choice accolades as well as industry and state exporting awards.
The company has always had the Luau Lifestyle-type clothing, said de Ville, but other lines called Surf's Up, Contemporary Aloha Lifestyles and Island Traditions were developed to suit customers from beach bums to the Bishop Street set. In bright and muted prints and solids, fabrics range from cotton and cotton blends to washable silks. The company also sells other companies' wearables. De Ville rattled off familiar brands such as Tori Richard, Iolani, Kahala, Quicksilver, Local Motion and Hawaiian Style. Tommy Bahama was among the lines, but it has withdrawn from the arrangement after setting up its own retail stores in the islands, de Ville said.
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The store's namesake, also known as Clarissa Haili.
The product mix is 60 percent fashions, 40 percent Hawaiian merchandise -- from gourmet coffees and syrups to fluffy white haupia kettle corn and crispy-looking purple sweet potato chips, to earrings and necklaces, books and music.
At the Hilo store recently one visitor had a good laugh at herself for misunderstanding a greeter's offer of a "chalet." She was given a shell lei.
The Nimitz facility houses part of the company's manufacturing operation. Large computer-programmed machines precisely cut inch-thick layers of colorful fabric into specific shapes. With labeled pattern pieces attached, the cut stacks of pockets, plackets, and yokes are bundled and sent to a contractor for sewing.
Despite the computerized cutting, the fabric pattern on the Hilo Hattie shirt de Ville was wearing last week was continuous -- there was no break in the design at the buttons or the pocket.
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A model is wrapped in the world's largest aloha shirt at the Nimitz Highway store.
It's something he's proud of, given competitors' higher-priced shirts that don't meet the same standard.
Hilo Hattie sells uniforms for Kamehameha Schools students through its uniform division. "We're perfect for that because the school is on all islands and so are we," de Ville said. The business has proven a good tool for expansion of Hilo Hattie's client base as parents come to buy uniforms for their children and see the array of clothing and merchandise. A new wholesale division catering to Army and Navy exchanges in Hawaii is the natural extension, he said.
Home accessories will be the next big retail area for Hilo Hattie, which has dabbled in such lines.
The company has come a long way from its small beginnings.
Entrepreneur Jim Romig founded Hilo Hattie's early incarnation in 1963 between Lihue and Kapaa, on Kauai. Two years later he established a manufacturing center on the site of what is now Ward Warehouse. Called Hawaiian Wear Unlimited, the store shuttled in Waikiki visitors and became known as the home of the "$3.95 Aloha Shirt." The company maintains formal and informal agreements with tour operators, hotel concierges and cruise lines where clients, guests and passengers will be shuttled or referred to Hilo Hattie stores for shopping.
Until the 1979 purchase of the Margolis Manufacturing and Retail Co. in Hilo, Romig focused the business on resort shops. Evelyn Margolis owned rights to the stage name of Hawaiian educator-turned entertainer Clarissa Haili. One of her most popular song-and-dance numbers was "When Hilo Hattie Does the Hilo Hop," hence the name. A Margolis painting of a broadly, sweetly smiling Haili, who died the year of the purchase, adorns a wall at the corporate offices of Pomare Ltd., Hilo Hattie's parent company.
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To Paul de Ville, president of Hilo Hattie parent Pomare Ltd., the stores are are more than just aloha wear. The company is beginning to market housewares and other products.
Hilo Hattie the entertainer, known for "comic hula," was not shy on stage. Hilo Hattie the company is not shy in its marketing. It boasts "the world's largest Hawaiian Internet site," and offers "Hawaii's largest selection of Hawaiian merchandise" and "Hawaii's largest selection of Hawaiian fashions."
"The reason we've arrived at that is that we've been all around and nobody comes close," de Ville said. "I don't think there's any agency out there who hands down that characterization, but we have searched and we've been making that claim for many years without any challenge."
It is not looking at getting any smaller. It has eight stores in Hawaii and is eyeing expansion in Waikiki, Waikoloa and Poipu. Its five current stores are in City of Orange, Calif.; Tempe, Ariz.; Miami, Fla.; Las Vegas, Nev.; and Orlando, Fla.
But those won't be the last, de Ville said.
Hilo Hattie
Parent company: Pomare Ltd.Founder, chairman: Jim Romig
Founded: 1963 as Kaluna Hawaii Sportswear on Kauai.
Changed name: 1979 with the purchase of Hilo's Evelyn Margolis Manufacturing and Retail Co. and rights to entertainer Hilo Hattie's name.
First mainland store: City of Orange, Calif., 1998
President and Chief Executive: Paul de Ville
2002 sales: $64.1 million
2003 projected: $67 million
Employees: About 500
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
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
