Pomare Ltd.

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Pomare Ltd.

700 North Nimitz Highway
Honolulu, Hawaii 96817
U.S.A.
Telephone: (808) 524-3966
Toll Free: (888) 526-0299
Fax: (808) 533-6809
Web site: http://www.hilohattie.com

Private Company
Incorporated: 1863 as Pomare Tahiti Sportswear
Employees: 500
Sales: $60 million (2006 est.)
NAIC: 315228 Men’s and Boys’ Cut and Sew Other Outerwear Manufacturing; 315232 Women’s and Girls’ Cut and Sew Blouse and Shirt Manufacturing

Based in Honolulu, Hawaii, Pomare Ltd. operates the Hilo Hattie chain of Hawaiian apparel and souvenir retail stores and also sells its wares through its web site and mail-order catalogs. While mostly catering to the tourist trade, the company also offers less flamboyant clothing to the everyday Hawaiian population. Men’s apparel include aloha shirts, silk shirts, and silk ties. For women the stores sell sarongs, muu muus, sundresses, tops, skirts and shorts, handbags, and jewelry.

In addition to aloha shirts for boys, Hilo Hattie offers sundresses, muu muus, Capri sets, and jewelry for girls, as well as stuffed animals for both boys and girls. Souvenirs include hula dolls, luggage tags, key chains, postcards, shot glasses, tumblers, mugs, keepsake boxes, hula skirts, and mini ukuleles. Other wares include chocolates, macadamia nuts, pineapple gift baskets, bath and body lotions, photo albums and picture frames, fresh leis, and tropical plant cuttings, seeds, and bulbs.

Moreover, Hilo Hattie sells Hawaiian-style wedding fashions and accessories. Six Hilo Hattie outlets are found on the Hawaiian islands, attracting about 2.5 million visitors each year. There are three mainland locations, as well, in Las Vegas, Nevada, and San Diego and Orange, California. The company does some of its own manufacturing at its main site and flagship store in Honolulu.

TIKI CULTURE GAINS EXPOSURE FROM WORLD WAR II

The backbone of the Hilo Hattie business, the aloha shirt, was trademarked by clothes manufacturer Ellery Chun in 1936. In the years before Hawaii became a state, the islands were best known for the United States’ major naval base in the Pacific Ocean, stationed at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu. The name “Pearl Harbor” would be seared into the consciousness of the entire country on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese navy launched a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. Naval fleet, thrusting the United States into World War II. During the course of the war numerous American military personnel passed through Hawaii. They became familiar with tiki culture and brought it back to the mainland where it was celebrated at tiki bars and lounges. With the advent of jet travel, Hawaii became a tourist attraction for travelers from America, as well as from postwar Japan. In the 1960s the Hawaiian mystique benefited even further with the popularity of the television police drama filmed on the islands, Hawaii Five-O.

To take advantage of Hawaiian tourism, Pomare was founded in 1963 by 25-year-old James S. Romig. A native of Washington State, he graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in accounting in 1960 and went to work for Boeing Corp. in Seattle as a financial analyst. With his savings he was able to start Pomare Tahiti Sportswear, a two-person wholesale importer of Hawaii resort wear, essentially aloha shirts and muu muus, to Seattle stores. Later the name would be shortened to Pomare Ltd. Also in 1963 Romig opened his first store, “Kaluna Hawaii Sportswear,” located on the island of Kauai. Two years later Romig hired 20 seamstresses to produce aloha shirts and muu muus and launched his first manufacturing company under the name “Hawaiian Wear Unlimited.” It was a poorly lit, hot, and noisy facility and in 1967 the operation was moved to a new factory that would soon become known as the “Home of the $3.95 Aloha Shirt” to Waikiki tourists. The company began busing them in, at first by way of a single van. The so-called shopping tour became an important component of Pomare’s success over the years. It evolved to include crafts demonstrations, live music, and samples of Hawaiian cuisine.

By 1970 Pomare topped the $1 million mark in annual revenues. A year later Romig hired an ex-Marine named Tom Ocasek to serve as Pomare’s first president and together they refined the company’s marketing and merchandising strategy, resulting in a doubling of annual sales every two years from 1974 to 1978. To maintain growth, in 1979 Pomare acquired the Margolis Manufacturing and Retail Co. located in Hilo, a major coastal town on the island of Hawaii. The company’s owners, Richard and Evelyn Margolis, also owned the rights to the stage name of one of Hawaii’s most famous entertainers, Hilo Hattie, who died in 1979. They had become her partners in 1971 to develop a line of Hilo Hattie brand clothing.

Hilo Hattie was born Clarissa Haili in 1901. She was a part-time schoolteacher and comic singer and hula dancer for Louise Akeo’s Royal Hawaiian Girls’ Glee Club. She took her famous Hilo Hattie stage name from a song “When Hilo Hattie Does the Hula Hop,” written by a member of Harry Owen’s Royal Hawaiian Orchestra. When the two groups were performing together at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in 1937, Haili persuaded the composer to allow her to perform the comic song. It was such a hit with the audience that she was brought back for five encores and her career as a headline entertainer was launched under her new stage name, Hilo Hattie. In time she became a goodwill ambassador for the islands and its culture. She would make appearances in the 1942 film Song of the Islands, the 1961 Elvis Presley movie Blue Hawaii, and a pair of Hawaii Five-O episodes.

In 1982 Pomare opened its first Hilo Hattie retail store, a unit in Kaui that offered more than 10,000 feet of retail space. To keep up with the company’s strong growth, a year later Pomare opened a new 80,000-square-foot facility that combined manufacturing and warehousing capabilities with a new showroom and 30,000 square feet of retail space. By this stage Pomare’s annual revenues reached the $30 million mark. In addition to resort-wear shops under the name Hilo Hattie’s Fashion Center and Hilo Hattie’s Resort Shop, Pomare operated Safari Pomare and Hawaiian Wear Unlimited stores. All told, the company had 45 units in operation by 1987. Of the $40 million in combined sales, the Hilo Hattie stores contributed $24 million.

NEW FOCUS: 1987

Romig and Ocasek took stock of their situation and decided that Pomare needed to concentrate its resources on the fast-growing upscale segment of the market, mostly conducted through the five-store Hilo Hattie division. Thus, in October 1987, 35 of the company’s stores were sold to U.K.-based retailer W.H. Smith & Son, and the remaining resort shops were also divested. In addition, Pomare sold a 55 percent stake in a tourist site it operated, the Maui Tropical Plantation. Focusing exclusively on the Hilo Hattie operation, Romig hired a new manager, John Tsarnas, a man with extensive international retailing experience with Duty Free Shoppers in Hawaii as well as with Gem Department Stores in St. Louis.

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

We are committed to providing you a truly unique Hawaiian shopping experience. As the world’s largest manufacturer of Hawaiian and Island lifestyle products, we can offer tremendous value pricing on the largest selection, backed by friendly customer service and a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

The five Hilo Hattie outlets expanded their product lines, adding the Royal Palm upscale resort-wear label as well as instituting other changes. Pomare also opened a new 15,000-square-foot store in late 1989 at the ANA Kalkaua Center in Waikiki, geared toward selling apparel, accessories, and gift items to the international traveler, in particular the Japanese (for whom bringing home gifts from their travels was a venerable custom) and more specifically the young female visitors who were devoted shoppers when visiting Hawaii. Unfortunately, the store was located on the second floor of the ANA Kalkaua Center, which had always had difficulty in attracting people. The store was shuttered in August 1990.

Pomare found better success on other fronts, however. In 1990 the company opened a 13,900-square-foot store in the new Lahaina Shopping Center in Maui. Another new Hilo Hattie store opened in June 1992, offering 12,000 square feet of retail space as well as 5,000 square feet of manufacturing capability in an adjacent building. In that year, Pomare also became Hawaii’s first manufacturer to invest in the state-of-the-art computer garment design and production system offered by Gerber Garment Technology. Moreover, Hilo Hattie attracted one million visitors in 1992, making it one of Hawaii’s most popular tourist attractions. In recognition of Pomare’s success, Romig was named Retailer of the Year by the Retail Merchants of Hawaii.

Growth continued on a number of fronts in the mid-1990s. Pomare expanded the Oahu store to almost 23,000 square feet in 1994 by adding a jewelry center. To appeal further to Japanese tourists and other “Eastbound” travelers, as well as local consumers (the “Kamaaina” market), the stores added updated styles and contemporary prints to their product lines. In 1996 the Hilo Hattie operation expanded its retail capabilities by launching a mail-order catalog and an Internet site where the company’s most popular items could be purchased. Pomare also attempted to diversify into European apparel, accessories, and gifts through the launch of stores under the Trends Milano banner, the first opening in Maui in April 1997. The plan was to open a dozen of these stores in Hawaii, the Pacific, and the mainland to primarily appeal to Japanese travelers. The concept failed to pan out, however, and Pomare returned its focus to the Hilo Hattie concept. A new 8,000-square-foot store opened in the Ala Moana Shopping Center in Honolulu in 1997. The company also sought to increase business and achieve some diversity through an increase in marketing efforts to meeting planners, offering them such incentives as shopping tour commissions, volume discounts, special fashion shows, and group identity apparel. Also in the works, offering even greater potential, was a plan to take Hilo Hattie to the mainland.

FIRST MAINLAND STORE OPENS: 1998

Hilo Hattie was unveiled on the mainland in November 1998 with the opening of a 20,000-square-foot store in Orange County, California, at The Block, a new entertainment and shopping complex located just two miles from Disneyland. As the 1990s came to a close, Hilo Hattie was named the Governor’s 1999 Exporter of the year for the exporting of manufactured products as well as “Overall Exporter of the year.” Further, the company was also named The 1999 Marketer of the Year by the American Marketing Association. Hilo Hattie stores in Hawaii were attracting more than two million visitors each year.

At the start of the new century, Hilo Hattie continued to expand its business in Hawaii. A new store opened in Maui in 2000, and the chain also took steps to increase its sales to the Kamaaina market. New fabrics and designs were introduced, as well as new lines that could appeal to a wide swath of the local population: Contemporary Aloha Lifestyles, Island Traditions, and Surf’s Up. In addition, Pomare’s uniform division, established in 2001, took advantage of the chain’s presence across the islands to sell uniforms to schoolchildren. Their parents, as a result, were exposed to the stores’ contemporary adult apparel. In 2002 the division won a two-year contract as the official provider of school uniforms for Kamehameha School, one of Hawaii’s largest private schools. In addition to school uniforms, the company landed a contract in 2003 to provide uniforms to Aston Hotels & resorts, the state’s largest hotel and condominium chains. Another non-tourist revenue stream came from the wholesale division, also launched in 2001 to sell merchandise primarily to Hawaii’s Army and Navy exchanges.

KEY DATES

1963:: James Romig establishes Pomare Tahiti Sportswear.
1965:: Manufacturing center is added.
1970:: Sales reach $1 million.
1979:: Rights to the Hilo Hattie name are acquired.
1987:: Pomare divests other lines and refocuses solely on the Hilo Hattie concept.
1998:: First mainland store opens in Orange County, California.
2002:: Las Vegas store opens.
2005:: San Diego store opens.

In other significant developments, Hilo Hattie introduced a new upscale line of silk fashions for women and men in 2001, and a year later became a marketing partner with Disney in support of the launch of the Lilo & Stitch animated film, which was set in Hawaii. Any source of revenue not associated with the tourist trade took on even greater significance during the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that resulted in a drop in air travel. Internet sales helped to make up for lost sales in the stores, increasing from about 10 percent of all revenues to about 15 percent. In 2003 Hilo Hattie increased Internet business even further by signing a marketing agreement with Amazon.com.

On the mainland in the meantime, Pomare opened a 23,000-square-foot megastore at Arizona Mills in Tempe, Arizona, in November 2000, just in time for the all-important holiday season. Also in 2000 a 10,000-square-foot store opened in Nashville, Tennessee. In March 2001, a store, about 9,000 square feet in size, opened in Dolphin Mall in Miami, Florida. The following year Hilo Hattie entered the Las Vegas market, opening a store in the Aladdin’s Desert Passage mall. Another Hilo Hattie store, offering 6,000 square feet of retail space, opened in Orlando’s Festival Bay Shopping Mall in April 2003. Hilo Hattie entered the San Diego market in 2005.

Pomare hoped to expand even further on the mainland, but cold weather in some locations hindered sales and the chain closed some of its stores, leaving only four (Las Vegas, San Diego, Orange, and Orlando) by the end of 2006 when a new chief executive officer, John Reed, was installed. He was a seasoned executive with more than 20 years of experience with DFS Group Limited, operator of a chain of duty-free shops, and had headed both the Hawaii and Japan divisions. After Reed took over, the Orlando Hilo Hattie closed as well. The company’s focus for the moment was on moving its flagship shop to the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center in Waikiki and the expansion of Hilo Hattie’s new Kona Coffee Visitor Center store on the Big Island.

Ed Dinger