Singing & Stringing

The Souzas, owners of Kanilea Ukulele, hope their $250,000 investment will make their company the best of its kind in the world

ON A recent morning in their office at the foot of the Koolau mountains, Joseph Souza strummed an ukulele and sang in a Hawaiian falsetto while his wife, Kristen, danced a hula.

It was a timeless scene: a husband and wife performing together, as families in Hawaii have done for generations. But what made the tableau even more touching was the origin of the instrument Joe strummed.

The ukulele was a product of Kanilea Ukulele, a company the Souzas founded nearly a decade ago as a shoestring operation producing about eight instruments per month out of their home in Kaneohe.

Now, after years of steady growth based only on word-of-mouth advertising, the Souzas have taken the plunge. The couple has invested $250,000 in a new factory that includes a $30,000 laser engraving machine, an innovative finishing system and a robust team of seven artisans who are handcrafting approximately 200 instruments per month.

Although Kanilea's ukes are being shipped off as fast as they're being made, it is not simply a desire to market demands that motivates the Souzas. It's also a passion for Hawaiian music and the traditional stringed instrument.

KANILEA UKULELE Owners: Kristen and Joseph Souza Founded: July 1998 Address: 46-216 Kahuhipa St. #3, Kaneohe Phone: 234-2868; toll free 1-866-334-2868 Web site: www.kanileaukulele.com

Kanilea is hardly Hawaii's only ukulele maker, or even its only family-owned uke business. The storied Kamaka family, for instance, has been making ukuleles for 90 years and is still going strong, with the third generation of Kamakas stepping up to continue the family tradition. Still, the Souzas are determined to make their own mark as makers of fine instruments, and to create their own legacy for their three sons: Kaimana, Iokepa and Kahiau.

"We're positive that it will be successful," Kristen says of Kanilea's expansion, which the company plans to unveil to dealers and the public later this month. "Our goal is to be the best ukulele company in the world, and we're going to do it."

Also a firefighter

Kanilea's goals are particularly lofty given the company's origins. It all started around 1994, when Joe bought a $150 drill press so he could start making instruments at home. At the time, Joe was working as a firefighter with the Honolulu Fire Department and apprenticing with his friend, Uncle Pete Bermudez, an accomplished uke maker.

So by the time the Souzas formally founded Kanilea Ukulele in 1998, Joe had several years of experience under his belt and a steady stream of customers who would hear about the instruments from friends and fellow musicians. Eventually, as orders picked up, Joe hired his first apprentice, Alastar McNeil, who is now Kanilea's shop supervisor.

Joe continued to work as a firefighter -- and he continues to work as one still -- while he and Kristen grew the company. By last year, the Souzas had six employees working out of a 1,000-square-foot workshop in their home. But they couldn't keep up with orders. So early this year they leased a new space in Kaneohe and began renovating it into a 3,000-square-foot facility that includes a factory and office-showroom.

"If we had been asked the question, 12 or 13 years ago, whether this would be where our ukulele business would be now, I would have said, 'Nah,'" says Joe. "It was just me and my workbench."

Standing in the factory's milling area recently, the air filled with the buzz of saws and sanders and the dry smell of fresh-cut wood, Joe explained how Kanilea makes an instrument.

The basic process entails drying the wood, cutting it into thin slices and carefully matching the grains into mirror image "bookmatched" sections that will serve as the front, back and sides of the instruments. The luthiers then craft a neck for the instrument, typically out of mahogany, and hammer metal frets into the neck's fingerboard. Finally, comes the finishing process, which creates a protective gloss that highlights the wood grains.

Just as various Portuguese and Hawaiian instrument makers produced innovations that led to the creation and evolution of the ukulele over the past 120 years, the Souzas are introducing their own.

Some are largely cosmetic. After years of contracting out custom inlay jobs, for example, the Souzas invested $30,000 to acquire a laser that enables them to do their own inlay designs with computer-assisted precision. This means the company can put a musician's name across the fingerboard in mother-of-pearl, or create a mother-of-pearl likeness of the Hawaiian archipelago on the ukulele's sound board.

The company also is experimenting with exotic woods beyond koa, including a Latin American wood called purple heart, which oxidizes to a dark purple when exposed to the air. Although unusual woods create a different appearance, they also create subtle changes in an instrument's sound.

Likewise, Kanilea has introduced changes to body and neck designs intended to enhance the tone and playability of its instruments. For instance, its standard soprano ukes have a slightly larger body than standard sopranos, which the company says creates a fuller sound. In addition, Kanilea makes instruments such as the Super Tenor, whose larger-than-normal body is designed to create a fuller sound.

What's more, the company employs an innovative finishing system designed for Taylor Guitars as an alternative to traditional, environmentally harmful lacquers.

"I thought of it as magical when I first saw it," says Bill Griffin, a veteran luthier who runs Kanilea's finishing department. "I have friends whose doctors have told them they can't do finishing any more. We don't have to worry about that."

Like all of Kanilea's employees, Griffin is a musician. Kristen Souza says this common knowledge of music enables the craftsmen to better understand the instruments they're making. Plus, she says, it creates a bond among the employees. To further nurture their passion, the Souzas plan to take all of their employees to California later this year to attend a national trade show for instrument makers and tour the Taylor Guitars factory. The guitar maker has agreed to give Kanilea's artisans practical advice on instrument making, Kristen said.

"It's a very expensive trip, but we think it's well worth it," she says. "As long as our employees are happy, that's so key, because all of their individual feelings go into their instruments."

All this attention to detail draws almost cultlike testimonials from far-flung customers, who write in to Kanilea in tones normally reserved for newborn babies. Among Kanilea's customers is Fay Kawamata, the owner of Exotic Ukuleles, a startup, Honolulu-based uke dealer that sells the instruments on eBay.

"When I went to their shop, I was pretty much blown away," she says. "Joe is a perfectionist. That's what I would call him, a perfectionist... . It's the sound; the quality is unbelievable."

It's not just for themselves that the Souzas are building the business. Kristen says she expects that all of the current employees will one day be managers overseeing an even larger operation. And the Souzas' younger children already enjoy sanding things in the shop, while their eldest son, Kaimana, who is 13, is already learning about the business by making the rounds with Kristen when she visits vendors.

The younger Souzas share something else with their parents and Kanilea's luthiers, a love of music. And that's a good thing, Kristen says, because, "They'll one day be running the show."