FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM Tom Rietow, Hardware Hawaii lumber division vice president, in the company yard off Kapaa Quarry Road in Kailua.

Rietow intent on Hardware
Hawaii earning its keep

Question: What brought you to the company?

Answer: I've been the last four years working at a company called Hale Kauai Ltd., which is like a sister company. It sold lumber and had three retail stores like Hardware Hawaii.

In addition to that, we also had a ready-mix department and made hollow tile block and did a bunch of other things Honsador and Hardware Hawaii don't do. I was over on Kauai doing that until the owners decided they didn't want to do it anymore. It was the next generation and they decided they didn't want to have employees and big operations.

My last year, my job was to shut it down and sell off assets. A long time ago, Hardware Hawaii President Dave Lundquist asked me if I was interesting in coming to Hardware Hawaii. It was a great fit. Our dads worked together. My dad worked for Lewers & Cooke. I worked for Lewers & Cooke and thought I was going to retire there.

Q: What's your plan?

A: What we want to do is we want to enlarge our contractor business, so we want to increase our sales with the contractors not only of Oahu but the outer islands as well. We do a considerable amount of shipping to the outside islands but we have no offices or anything. We use Mapunapuna to do the sales part. Hopefully, as we enlarge our business on Oahu, which is our primary thing to do at the moment, the obvious next step would be to look at opportunities on the outside islands. But you've got to walk before you run.

Q: How do you plan to grow Oahu contractor business?

A: We plan to be aggressive in sales. One of the things we can do is get material to people in a one-day notice. So it's excellent customer service on a consistent basis. Not good today and bad tomorrow. We will be competitive in pricing. We have a very knowledgeable, veteran sales time. As you know, business is relationships and you have to take a step back and say what was the business originally about. ... It really started out as a hardware store with wood. Lumber is now such a big part of our overall business in today's world we're going to go out and focus on it with our contractor sales team, headed by Mel Shiroma.

Q: Do you plan to hire?

A: Maybe 10 to 15 workers. That would take us up to 275 employees.

Q: Is the location a nod to residential growth in West Oahu?

A: That's certainly a plus that we're going to be out on the Ewa plain. Also the barge comes in at Kalaeloa, right next door, taking the trucking out of it. We will do our own trucking. We outsource a lot of it now. We'll become more efficient. I think the efficiency will play a big role in being able to serve our customers.

Q: Won't the new distribution center be farther away from your Kailua and Kaneohe stores?

A: Yes. The Kapaa center was always right nearby. We're working on the logistics of that that right now.

Q: How is the new Mapunapuna location doing?

A: It took a little while to get on its feet but that's OK. It does really good now. What we foresee, as we focus on our contractor business, it should actually feed back to our retail stores and the other things we sell because business is all about relationships.

Q: I understand your lumber sales grew 38 percent in 2004 vs. 2003. What about this year?

A: It's going to grow tremendously this year 2005 over 2004. It's about another 33 percent.

Q: Last word?

A: We are excited to get out there. ... We feel that it's not only good for the contractors to have a choice, which we hope to give them, but it's also good for economy and the construction industry with us stepping up. It will also be good for our employees. We're always going to remain humble. We're not going to be the big shots. We're going to earn our keep.