Paulele Alcon, the new store’s owner, joined employees in celebrating the grand opening of the location at Windward Mall.
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Hawaii’s Finest Clothing, an apparel brand that started on Molokai, recently opened a fifth store at Windward Mall in Kaneohe.
The new 5,000-square-foot store, which opened March 8, is located on the first floor, next to Target, and is owned and operated by Paulele Alcon, who founded the company in 2009.
Hawaii’s Finest Clothing evolved from a T-shirt company to an apparel brand, according to a statement from the company. Since its start, the company has supported the “local community through music and philanthropy,” according to its website.
Today, the brand has five retail locations. In addition to the new store at Windward Mall, it has two stores at Ka Makana Alii, one 8,000 square feet and the other 11,000 square feet; a 4,000-square-foot store at Ala Moana Center; and a 2,000-square-foot store on Molokai. The brand also has a 6,000-square-foot corporate office at Halawa Industrial Park, which serves as an online fulfillment and warehouse hub.
Last year, the company’s annual revenue was in the eight figures, Alcon said. Currently, about 70% of sales come from its brick-and-mortar stores, with the remaining generated from online sales, he said.
The new store at Windward Mall has about eight employees, Alcon said. Overall, the company has about 70 employees.
Alcon recently spoke with Pacific Business News from Hilo, where Hawaii’s Finest Clothing is currently running a pop-up shop for the week of the Merrie Monarch Festival.
Why did you choose to add a store at Windward Mall? What made this a good location for your business? A lot of our events and a lot of our online orders — when we ran analytics — it was coming from that side [of the island], the Windward side. So we’ve been meaning to open up [a store] on that side for a while.
What are the expansion plans for Hawaii’s Finest Clothing in 2024? Vegas is up next for us. We’re gonna open up a store in Vegas, one in Hilo [on Hawaii Island], one on Maui, and then one on Kauai. And we’re in the final stages of doing a deal in Japan. We’re opening up stores in Japan. I think we’re shooting for 14 [stores]. It will be Hawaii’s Finest stores, but we’ll be launching with a Japanese partner out there. … I can’t guarantee that all [will] happen this year, but that’s the plan.
What is the biggest challenge the company faces right now? The hardest challenge for us is finding solid employees. We’ve expanded pretty easily, but the challenge is always finding those solid employees.
What strategies are you using to find and retain employees? l feel like we pay well. We have a lot of perks, and we’re real active in the community. We’re real active on social media creating content, so I feel like we’re one of the cooler companies to work for. And here, there’s no real ceiling. You’ll go as far in the company as you want to go. If you’re looking for a job, it’s there, but if you’re looking to learn and move up, there’s a lot of opportunities for that, too.
I’ve talked with a lot of small business owners who are worried about opening brick-and-mortar locations and are focusing more on online sales. Why has Hawaii’s Finest Clothing really focused on having stores in multiple locations? I feel like we have such a different shopper here compared to the Mainland. A lot of the people here, they want to feel like they’re part of the company. They want to come in. They want to talk to the staff. They want to see the store that we get to see on social media. I feel like we don’t even have customers: It’s like everybody’s a big family.
Is there anything I haven’t asked that you want to share? I feel like social media is huge nowadays and I really feel like it could be a huge tool, if you use it correctly, but it could be a huge pain in the side, because everybody nowadays is trying to post their journey, right? And I feel the journey is slowed down by them always trying to share their journey, instead of focusing on … getting to where they need to get to. … I see small businesses focusing so much attention on: ‘today we’re going to start the business,’ ‘today we’re choosing our designs,’ ‘today we’re packing orders,’ and it just cripples them. It takes them a year to do what it should take them a month to do.
What advice would you give someone wanting to start a business? Just take the first step. You don’t have to go crazy, but you have to go. You have to take that step. A lot of people talk about it. They research about it. They’re posting on social media about it. Just take the first step.
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