Tiny Lana'i facing some big changes
A Day in the Life of Gifts with Aloha
Monday, April 17
8:52 a.m.: Kim and Phoenix Dupree unlock the door of their boutique Gifts with Aloha.
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| Phoenix Dupree, who owns a gift shop on Lana‘i with his wife, works at his second job as a waiter in the restaurant at the Lodge at Ko‘ele. |
“It’s like being an ambassador of Lana‘i,” says Phoenix about his many visitor contacts in the store and at his other two jobs, one as a captain in the formal dining room at the Lodge at Ko‘ele, the other selling luxury homes on the island.
Phoenix brought the family to Lana‘i from Maui in March 1991, when he joined a mass of visitor industry trainers shipped in to prepare pineapple workers for jobs at the soon-to-be opened Manele Bay Hotel.
“It was like two hours of how to introduce yourself,” he says. “I was telling them get ready because there’s a whole new industry coming.”
He joined the masses he’d trained a few months later, with his job at the Lodge, and in August 1997, he and Kim launched Gifts with Aloha, convinced that visitors would swarm to a place where they could buy local artwork and crafts, and that locals would eat up a place to buy gifts that was closer than Maui. So far they’ve been right.
Sales in their first full year topped $100,000 and in 1999 climbed another 40 percent. Last December they moved across Dole Park to their current 975-square-foot location — four times the size of the old store. Rent, which is paid to The Lana‘i Co., has gone up to $1,040, about 5 percent of sales, and sales per square-foot have gone down, Phoenix says. But with $20,000 a month coming in, he says they’re covering their costs and chipping away at their $25,000 in debt.
If visitors continue flocking to Lana‘i the way they have so far this year, Phoenix says, he expects $250,000 in sales or even more.
9:32 a.m.: Phoenix heads to his day job at the real estate sales office. He has been training since the beginning of the year to sell the posh homes that The Lana‘i Co., which owns 98 percent of the island, is building at Manele Bay.
The luxury homes, which start at $1.3 million, are part of The Lana‘i Co.’s master plan for the island, and like the resorts — where many of the buyers are harvested — they bring a rarified and free-spending clientele.
“They’ll come in here and buy a $600 plate,” Phoenix says.
The Duprees could easily add about 50 percent to their $50,000 income with just “a couple of good sales,” Phoenix says, which could help them get the garage Kim hopes to put on the house this year and maybe replace her 18-year-old Subaru. But Phoenix says he is more interested in the overall benefit of the home sales to the island.
“When people buy a million-dollar house there that helps our economy,” he says.
Roughly 100 homes are planned at Manele Bay, plus custom homes that range from 6,000 feet and a few million dollars to 12,000 feet and $21 million. The 28 villas built by the company in the mountains near the Lodge at Ko‘ele start at $850,000.
The Duprees’ three-bedroom, plantation home in town, bought from The Lana‘i Co. in 1998, cost $165,000.
9:52 a.m.: Sherry Menze, Lana‘i’s harbor manager, comes in and browses through the handmade Easter cards. At $3 each, they’re expensive. “But they’re so cute,” she says, selecting four of the pastel-colored cards for family on the Mainland.
And what the heck, with the steady stream of visitors this winter, business has been good at Spinning Dolphins Charters, she says, the excursion company her husband, Jeff, operates with his six-person boat.
10:07 a.m.: Karen Currie strides in wearing sensible shoes and a name tag. The program manager for St. Louis-based Maritz Travel Co., the world’s largest incentive travel firm, is spending $14 on two petroglyph-patterned photo albums during a break from shepherding 116 people from Houston-based Equilon Lubricants.
In the five days they’ve spent at the Manele Bay Hotel, the Equilon folks have done just about everything the island offers: snorkeled, fished, golfed, rented jeeps. “Maybe it’s what they haven’t done,” Currie says.
Groups make up 27 percent of Lana‘i’s business, says Todd Winston, Lana‘i Co. sales director, and incentives, which reward a company’s top performers, are the bulk of that.
Hawai‘i can make up a third of Maritz’s $2 billion in annual sales, says senior account executive Michael McCarthy, with the majority going to Maui, and Lana‘i splitting the remainder with Kauai and the Big Island.
The average incentive group of 100 people will spend roughly $400,000, on meals, lodging and activities.
Groups pushed Lana‘i’s resorts, which have a total of 350 rooms, to record occupancy and revenues in the first quarter of this year, Winston says, though he offers no specifics. Like state tourism officials, the company’s goal is to attract more of these high-spending visitors, which it does with sales calls several times a year to people like McCarthy, and advertisements in meeting trade publications.
But Kim says having all expenses paid doesn’t necessarily make those groups spend more in her store.
As for Equilon: “Not one person from that group came and bought anything big.”
10:41 a.m.: Four 40-ish Japanese women walk into the store and move quickly through its offerings. They seize on a shirt and a few aloha-print backpacks, a total bill of $97.54. Their escort, an old friend named Lita Kuniyoshi who lives in Kona, says they’ve been to Waikiki many times, but this is their first trip to Lana‘i, and they stayed only last night.
“We don’t play golf, we just want to see the Lodge at Ko‘ele,” she says. “In Japan, everyone is talking about the fine food at the Lodge.”
The Lana‘i Co.’s Winston says they don’t do much marketing in Japan because the return is too small. Asian visitors, he says, want more shopping, for instance.
“They come, they see, they go,” he says.
State figures show only 6 percent of Lana‘i visitors came from Asia in 1999.
10:46 a.m.: Norma Nartia, an on-call employee in room service at the Lodge, comes through the door and heads straight to the jewelry counter.
Norma came to Lana‘i from the Philippines in 1996 to join her mother, who had come 10 years earlier to work in the pineapple fields. Today, they are both among the 540 Lana‘i Co. employees at the two hotels. About 1,100 people are employed by the Lana‘i Co., roughly 63 percent of the workforce.
The Lodge has been busy for two weeks, meaning Norma has had work, and within minutes she has made her selections: a sterling silver plumeria necklace, anklet, earrings and a ring. The bill comes to $159, plus another $98.21 due later for a bracelet that has to be ordered.
The jewelry is for her daughter Virginia, and Norma says she hopes it will be a remembrance of the islands, which they are planning to leave for Los Angeles. Norma hopes to find “a better job” there, with steady hours and benefits, as a health care worker.
11:43 a.m.: The only dot-commers of the day walk in, fresh off their company’s first-ever incentive trip, and eager to become part-time Lana‘i residents.
“We saw some models we’re going to go look at,” says Kirby Coryell, senior vice president of Commerce One, a business-to-business company that had one of 1999’s top-grossing initial public stock offerings and just wrapped up a six-day Manele Bay getaway for 60 of its best salespeople and their guests. “We’re on the West Coast, so it’s a quick ride out.”
But the stock market, which took a major dive while they were here, may put a damper on their plans, he says. “We’ve been joking about Nero and Rome,” he laughs good-naturedly.
Kirby and his wife, Pam, spend $75.26 on an aloha shirt card for a friend who’s “a Hawaiian nut,” two picture frames, and a purse.
12:22 p.m.: Phoenix walks through the door just as Kim phones a lunch order to the Blue Ginger Cafe next door.
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| Marlou Laciste, a waitress at the Blue Ginger Cafe on Lana‘i, serves up lunch to customers Rick and Lina Widmaier. |
“No one came in, but I got to do a practice interview,” he says of his hours at the real estate office. As if on cue, Sally and Jim Clemens, homeowners at the Terraces at Manele, are right behind him.
The Philadelphia couple stumbled on Lana‘i five years ago almost accidentally, coming to the island as day trippers to relax after a search for a condo on Maui was foiled by what they considered unacceptable levels of traffic. They glimpsed the model homes during a tour of the island and began a frantic search for the broker. Within 48 hours, they were owners.
In addition to their residence in Philadelphia, the investment consultant and commercial general contractor also have a summer home in Ocean City, N.J. But they spend three or four months a year on Lana‘i, and say as soon as their son Gabriel goes to college, they’ll double that.
“We’re counting the days,” Sally says.
12:46 p.m.: Kim dashes to the Blue Ginger, waving on her way in to the owner Georgia Abilay, who just happens to be her mother-in-law. She scoots behind the counter to get a couple of Pepsis and picks up a mahi plate and teri chicken.
Georgia says her clients are mostly local — the way it’s been since she and her husband, Joe, took over the place. The plantation was still going then and a siren still summoned the workers to the fields at dawn and shooed them to bed at 8 in the evening. The cafe built its hours around their schedule, and changed them when people started working nights and weekends.
“We used to close like the stores for an hour in the afternoon but we stopped it two years ago,” Georgia says. Business is always steady, she says, even when the hotels are less full and money may be tighter for some. But she knows when the hotels are really busy, she says, by the amount of take-out business the cafe does.
12:56 p.m.: Phoenix heads back to the site office, and Kim is on her own again. Before she can open her lunch, Natalie Geilmann jingles the bell on the door. “I need to find a gift for my missionary brother,” she says cheerily.
The 21-year-old pre-med student on leave from the University of Utah has been knocking down $160 a night in tips at the Clubhouse, she says, the golf course restaurant at the Manele Bay Hotel.
“It’s awesome,” she coos, as she spends $22.40 on a journal, two candles and a koa bookmark.
Official statistics show visitors to Lana‘i down 18 percent from 1999 through June, but on the ground, tourism employees say business has been great. The number crunchers at the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism admit that the statistics are “unstable,” and blame the small sample size.
1:46 p.m.: Eight-year-old Kanoa will be barreling through the door any minute, so Kim attempts to make a dent in her lunch while the peace lasts. Her youngest daughter, 12-year-old Chante, is the family’s brain trust, a good student who takes care of her brother while her mom and dad are working. She wants to be a writer or a musician, and plays her saxophone in music festivals all over the state. Kim’s other daughter, 17-year-old Tihani, lives with her father on Maui, where she is a junior at Maui High School. Kim and Phoenix pay many of Tihani’s expenses, she says, sending her between $300 and $500 a month.
“Teenage girls are expensive,” says Kim, who like many local residents, has to keep an eye on her finances. When special events come up, such as this year’s prom — which cost her $300 for the dress alone — the bill goes up.
“That was a real eye-popper,” she says.
2:09 p.m.: Kanoa slouches in from second grade and drops his books and rain slicker on the floor. Mom scolds him for sloth as he rifles through her big purse, pulling out two books.
2:12 p.m.: Rae Anne Obado dumps her aloha-print angels on Kim’s counter. She delivers 100 a week to Gifts with Aloha, charging $4 a pop for the Christmas tree ornaments that Kim will sell for $9. “I sell these so fast she hates me,” Kim says.
Crafting adds $11,000 a year, or about 30 percent, to Rae Anne’s income as the supervisor of Dollar-Rent-A-Car, Lana‘i’s only U-drive company, and a good chunk of that comes from Kim’s store.
This year, Rae Anne will use the money to pay off her new sewing machine — an $1,100 model — and to make inroads on the next, a $3,000 behemoth that can sew from computerized designs.
“I see it and go ‘kuh-CHING, kuh-CHING,’ because I think of how much money I could make with it,” she says of the coveted Singer.
Any crafting money left over goes to family fun, she says, as salaries will be devoted to building a new home, which she and her husband, Keahi, hope to break ground on by the end of the year.
“This is going to finance trips, dining out,” she says, waving her hand over the angels spread across the showcase. “This is all our fun money, right here.”
2:27 p.m.: Phoenix pokes his head in to collect Kanoa. He’ll go home and get him started on his homework, and then get ready to go to the Lodge. Kim kisses the boy and takes off after a customer.
3:51 p.m.: Norma is back. She’s decided she also needs a remembrance of Hawai‘i, and selects a 14-karat gold plumeria ring. She pulls out her change purse again, sliding out exactly $32 for a deposit on the $125 ring. Meanwhile, Chante has breezed in from band practice, chirped hello and taken off on her bike, leaving her saxophone behind the counter.
4:29 p.m.: Scuba instructor John Scouller wanders in ready to spend a bundle for his girlfriend Amber’s birthday. He’s got plenty of money, he says, because the cost of living is so cheap here.
“There’s nothing to spend it on,” he says, selecting two coconut candles and a koa hairpin for $32.81.
Most money spent on the island eventually finds its way directly or indirectly back to where it came from: The Lana‘i Co. Five percent of Kim’s sale to John will probably figure in her rent payment to the Lana‘i Co.
And for Kim’s recent birthday — “the 20th anniversary of my 21st birthday,” she jokes — she and Phoenix had pupus, drinks and dessert at the Lodge.
Not all residents are entirely comfortable with the arrangement.
“You work for the company, the water company is owned by the company, your rent is paid to the company,” gripes one resident, saying that there is resentment every time a luxury home goes up where kids used to play. “It’s just one endless cycle. It’s a different way of living.”
4:59 p.m.: Phoenix, dapper in a tuxedo, stops in during his dinner break from the Lodge, the only restaurant on the Island that requires men to wear jackets. Even though he regularly waits on celebrities — Joe Montana, Gene Hackman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ross Perot Jr., Tom Selleck (“A handsome guy, I tell you”), Henry Winkler, Oliver Stone — he says tips always come in about the same, between $100 and $150 a night. On a great night, it’s $200.
At 30 hours a week, Phoenix brings home about $40,000 a year. For a while, they were getting by with Kim’s taking only $1,000 a month from the store, and pumping the rest back into the business, but starting last month, they’ve increased her salary to $2,000.
“I need her to make more money so I can pay more bills,” Phoenix says.
5:53 p.m.: Newlyweds from Bellmore, Long Island, walk in. They have come from five days at the Four Seasons on Maui, and will spend five days at Manele Bay. The bride’s emerald-cut diamond could cover the national debt of some small countries. They chat about Lana‘i, profess they like it better than Maui. They don’t buy, but they are friendly.
6:03 p.m.: Kim closes the door, finally. She takes down the tinkly wind chime that alerts her to customers. “No more torture from touri,” she says, using her plural for “tourists.”
She prints out the receipts for the day: decent, but no record.
“I just missed $1,000, but that’s okay,” she says. “For a Monday, that’s darn good.”
6:27 p.m.: Kim piles into her 1982 Subaru hauling her bag, her laptop and Chante’s saxophone. She prowls the tiny square for Kanoa and his baseball team and when she finds them, arranges a ride home for him.
6:33 p.m.: The Pine Isle Market sells everything from televisions to mosquito repellent, but mostly it sells groceries, one of only three grocery stores on Lana‘i.
Kim parks outside and runs in for hot dog buns and maybe dessert. But this is Monday — four days after the last supply barge.
Losing on the buns, Kim grabs a box of glazed doughnuts and a pack of Virginia Slims menthol.
“It’s packed at Manele, I heard,” she says to a friend as they stand in line.
When it’s packed at Manele, Pine Isle manager Kerry Honda says he doesn’t much notice. Visitors certainly don’t come in for groceries, and locals with extra tips in their pockets don’t stock up on anything in particular.
“We’re the everyday milk place, the bread place,” Honda says. “You just buy what you need.”
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“When people buy a million-dollar house (at Manele Bay) that helps our economy.”
— Phoenix Dupree, who is training to sell homes built by the Lana‘i Company |
6:52 p.m.: Kim pulls up in her back driveway, and Chante comes out to help carry. This is the family’s first home, and though she loves it, Kim would really like a garage to house the car, the washing machine and to give some extra storage space. Phoenix wants a fence for Oreo, the black-and-white dog who grinds a circle in the lawn as he excitedly welcomes the family home. A preliminary “guesstimate” on the garage, however, does not look promising: about $18,000 to $25,000.
7:24 p.m.: Kim brings Kanoa a plate of hot dogs and carrots to munch while he watches the Disney Channel. Chante, a vegetarian, has a vegetable stir fry. When she needs money, she says over dinner, she works in her mother’s store, or helps her grandmother at the Blue Ginger Cafe.
“Over here you really save up because there’s nothing to buy,” she says. But on trips to Maui with the band, she stocks up on music by Ricky Martin, Britney Spears and Kenny G. Clothes and candy also find their way into the mix, she says.
7:37 p.m.: Chante talks on the phone to her friend Megan about math homework between bites. Kim snuggles with Kanoa on the couch and tunes into the kids’ programs. They sit back and wait for the siren.
