Reyn’s Man

The aloha shirt business comes in all sizes.

Tim McCullough leads three companies that make, wholesale and retail aloha shirts. Not just any aloha shirts, but genuine made-in-Hawaii deals. It was his signature brand (named after his father, Reyn McCullough, and seamstress Ruth Spooner) that spawned the phrase “Reyn’s Men” for all the bankers and businessmen up and down Bishop Street.

It’s a competitive business, which has seen multimillion dollar apparel producers jump into the mix, salivating over riding the big wave of enthusiasm for printed shirts that has crested over the past decade.

How large is the global market for aloha shirts, and what portion of that is the Hawaii market in terms of dollars or sales?

I can only speak for our own business, but, as it is right now, in the past two to three years, our figures have been pretty consistent. About 72 percent of our wholesale business has been exported out of the state of Hawaii.

Man of the Cloth: Tim McCullough is surrounded by products in his Iwilei factory.

Many years back, the Chamber of Commerce here in Hawaii said that a shirt had to be made in Hawaii to truly be an aloha shirt. How many companies are doing that here today and how do they compare to other manufacturers worldwide?

There are probably four genuine ones that are still here today. I mean you can go to Macy’s. There’s the Ono collection, and there’s Manoa Shirt Co. Those are both made in Indonesia. Is that a Hawaiian shirt? It’s a Hawaiian-themed shirt, but it’s not really made in Hawaii, so does that come under the premise that the Chamber of Commerce dictated in the early ’60s, that it has to be made in Hawaii to be a Hawaiian shirt? And there are a couple of other very successful companies that are exporters, but they’re making their product away from Hawaii, and I’m not saying that’s wrong or right. It’s just that the way they’ve written it, do they really qualify as a truly Hawaiian shirt?

We’ve made some products offshore. We’ve made some separate labels that wouldn’t be confused with the Reyn Spooner label, and they serviced primarily a radically different marketplace, and it was a price-sensitive market. We still do it today, and it just makes more sense to make the product offshore, because of the cost benefits, so that you can fit into a much more competitive price level.

Has there been any celebrity-type person who has really highlighted the aloha shirt?

You can turn on the TV and see noted names wearing the product. Somebody sent me the wine connoisseurs’ magazine. The name eludes me at the moment, but there’s a picture of Francis Ford Coppola in there, who has quite a substantial investment in that valley with his own vineyard and is a tremendous supporter of keeping Napa in agriculture. So I know he’s bought real estate that came up in the marketplace and then turned around and rededicated it or gave it to the community of Napa, so that it could be left with open space and keep the theme of agriculture. But you look at the photo of him and there he is, wearing one of our shirts. Gosh. You know, I’ve got a whole drawer at home of clippings and articles of many people.

I think, as far as manufacturers, I think we’ve all made an impression on the marketplace in our own way. You know what Kahala has done with its product line and the Avi product that it has developed there for quite a few years in the past. There’s Dave Rochlen and Surfline and Jams World and the look that he has brought to the marketplace. Gosh, somebody like Sparky Doo with Pineapple Connection. I think we’ve all got our own look that is complementary in the marketplace to the consumer and we all make our own statement. Who they choose to finally consume is, of course, their choice.

Why do you think they are so popular with the business community?

I think people are looking to be more relaxed, more happy, more comfortable in their lifestyle. Obviously, the relaxation of the dress standards in the business sector has had a lot to do with that. Was it because of the relaxed regulations, or was it because everyone finally realized, gee, these guys from Hawaii have been doing it for 20, 30 years? They’re pretty smart out there. Maybe we ought to take some cues from them. I think, prints are now an accepted norm in a man’s wardrobe, as opposed to years ago, when he bought a shirt in Hawaii and wore it at his luau every five years or so. It’s just become an accepted part of the wardrobe today. Is it going to continue? I think so. We’ve seen it go up and down. The cycle’s in a compensation right now, because it just went through the roof in the past four or five years. I don’t see what’s going on with a softening of the business is a derivative of the business itself. I think it’s just the conditions that are out there today. I think consumerism, especially in the apparel field, has been quite soft for over a year now.

Is the aloha shirt industry already a mature industry? What is your five- to 10-year outlook?

No, I don’t think it’s a mature industry. Again, I think it will go through a series of peaks and valleys. That’s been our history in the manufacturing business. We’ve been a company for 53 years now, as far as our retail organization. We’ve been manufacturing for 40 years now, and we’ve seen the cycle come and go. Obviously, it has never gone to the peaks that it has gone to in the past few years, but I think it’s going to be as stable as those who are willing to be committed to it.

In the apparel business, when something’s hot, everybody jumps into it, even though their business in the past was solid golf shirts or navy blazers. People all of a sudden jump on the hot trend, and they’ve gotten into print shirts. I think that had benefit to the industry, and it also had some drawbacks, in that there was a lot of shoddy merchandise out there. Once that starts to happen, it starts to self-implode, and I think what’s happened is we’ve gone through a cleansing process, where all of the Johnny-come-latelies have been weeded out. Now, it’s down to the genuine guys. I think the ones that are smart and are good businesspeople will come out and go through the next cycle again.

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