Hawaiian Style Uniforms: Hilo Hattie responds to Uniform Market Demand for Its Fashion Apparel

Is there anything more identifiable than a Hawaiian shirt when it comes to recognizable apparel? You can tell what you are looking at from 10 feet away and, depending on the colors and pattern, sometimes from 100 feet away.

Nobody knows the Hawaiian shirt business better than Hilo Hattie, The Store of Hawaii. The retail and manufacturing company has grown from a single sportswear store opened in 1963 into a 10-store chain, Web site and direct sales organization with over 500 employees. The Hilo Hattie name is actually a division of Pomare Ltd., and the firm states it is the largest manufacturer/retailer of aloha wear in the world.

For the last decade, these aloha shirt specialists have been actively pursuing the uniform market. In 2001, the Hilo Hattie Corporate Sales & Uniform Division was officially named and a new profit center was formed.

We provide a little bit of everything, says Terri Funakoshi, manager of corporate sales and uniforms.

Hilo Hattie provides uniforms for many local resorts on the islands. In 2003, the firm was awarded the uniform contract for the Aston Hotels and Resorts, one of the largest hotel and condominium chains in Hawaii.

We also outfit cleaning companies, schools and restaurants, says Funakoshi. During the school season, we provide a uniform store within our retail store. This makes it very convenient for parents to shop. Since 2002, Hilo Hattie has been the uniform provider for the Kamehameha Schools, Hawaiis largest private school. All of the schools the company outfits wear solid polos with their respective school logo paired with solid bottoms. And, of course, they also have aloha wear as part of their program.

There are seven Hilo Hattie retail locations in the state of Hawaii and three on the mainland. The Orange, Calif. and Las Vegas, Nev., locations are very popular, and as a result, Hilo Hattie is starting to see uniform-related sales activity with hotels and schools in those areas. The third mainland location is in Orlando, Fla..

I think the more tropical locations on the mainland are better for us. The schools in California, for example, like the aloha shirt for their kids. It started as a casual wear option and has transformed into a regular uniform item.

Outside of the seasonal school uniform sales, the retail stores take inquiries for corporate and bulk purchases or uniforms and send them to Funakoshis department.

Most of what we sell at the retail stores is available in a bulk sale or uniform version, says Funakoshi. We ask the customer what the intended use of the garment is, and based on the response, we may change the fabrications from the retail version to a uniform fabric or style. A double dye, poly/cotton fabric which can stand an industrial wash and offers less fading, for example.

The uniform division benefits greatly from the retail side of Hilo Hattie, drawing from the operations hundreds of styles. The uniform designers will modify the traditional one-pocket, aloha shirt to a two-pocket version, for example. The patterns are all in-house and accessible to the uniform sales team.

We have modifications to the retail line for housekeeping, cleaning services, resort wear and school uniforms. There are probably 1,000 active SKUs right now.

The retail fashion side of Hilo Hattie is divided into these categories:

Luau bright colors and fun prints

Traditional conservative and toned-down prints

Surf surf themed prints and styles

Contemporary upscale styles and fabrications (including silk)

The firm has directors of sales (DOS) in California and Las Vegas who service the uniform accounts. These DOS have all the retail styles to draw upon when calling on uniform customers, but the majority of the resort business they handle is custom designed.

We can do anything the client wants because we have the manufacturing background, says Funakoshi. We can take the program from art concepts all the way to a completed garment.

Business is great, according to Funakoshi, with sales up 58% in 2004. We are finding that uniform buyers want their company to have a unique look. So our custom side is increasing nicely. Another benefit to working with Hilo Hattie is that, if you want it made in Hawaii, we are the largest manufacturer here. This allows us to store the clients fabric up to two years. So if they need to cut new sizes, we just put it into production.

We are also developing aloha-print polo shirt styles and would like to have a continuous line there as well. There are a lot of requests to have an aloha-print polo shirt. These items would also obviously cost less because the print would be available and not custom.

Unlike other Hawaiian shirts in the uniform industry currently available, Hilo Hatties are often custom made for each customer. We talk with the customer and find out what they want. We are all about prints. Aloha. Tropical. Conversational. We can do anything from floral to airplanes. As a manufacturer, we work directly with fabric suppliers.

One interesting style note is that clients in Hawaii ask for more traditional prints and more subdued colors than their mainland counterparts. The mainland customers request styles that look to them more Hawaiian such as bright colored florals.

The Hilo Hattie Web site currently has over 125,000 email addresses they send blasts to, which helps to promote HiloHattie.com as the largest volume Web site in Hawaii. The company plans to make the uniform line available via the Web site as well in the near future.

The retail Web site has proven to be very successful. I believe consumers today want that convenience of looking things up on their own before they actually have to talk to someone.

The firm also offers many promotional product and souvenir items. We can provide Hawaiian print pens, pads of paper, mugs and more to match the print patterns on the apparel. Corporate gift baskets are also popular. This makes us a one-stop shop. For instance, if we get a bank for a client, we can do their promotional t-shirt, their pin and their gifts as well as their uniforms. We go in and propose everything along with a uniform. It makes it easier for the client. One can open the door to the other. And often when we get there, they have already looked at the Web site and have something in mind, and so we just customize it from there.

The company is also planning to offer hospital scrubs in aloha prints.

With over two million visitors a year to its retail locations, Hilo Hattie is a force to be reckoned with. The Uniform and Bulk Sales Division operates from the companys 80,000-square-foot headquarters.

While the uniform industry presents a unique set of challenges above and beyond the retail fashion game, Hilo Hattie appears positioned well to offer uniform programs and customers the custom, special order service they desire.

The firm has one custom order already made that no other uniform company will ever likely match. In 1999, the Guinness Book of World Records certified Hilo Hatties 400XL aloha shirt as the Worlds Largest Aloha Shirt. If you make it to Honolulu any time soon, you can see the shirt on display at the Nimitz Highway store.

Hilo Hattie

700 North Nimitz Highway

Honolulu, HI 96817

808-535-6615

800-233-8912 ext 6615

email: [email protected]

www.hilohattie.com