The Muumuu Maven

How an eco-conscious hobby grew into a hip, successful business

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Deb Mascia and her husband Eric Mascia pictured outside their Kailua store, Muumuu Heaven. Photos by Karin Kovalsky

You’d think that making dresses day after day would get boring. But you aren’t Deb Mascia, owner of Muumuu Heaven, and these aren’t typical threads.

The Aussie native has an obsession for vintage muumuus and aloha-print fabrics. “I go to yard sales, estate sales and quite a large network of tutus collect muumuus for me,” says Mascia. Every inch of her found treasures, which range from polyester to silk and date from the 1930s to the ’80s, are reworked into one-of-a-kind dresses, skirts, pillows, clutch handbags and buttons. And although she wasn’t looking to start a business, her eco-conscious hobby has turned into an e-commerce site and Kailua retail store with an enthusiastic fan base.

It all began when Deb and her husband, Eric, moved into their Kaneohe home in 2001. A self-proclaimed “mad recycler,” Deb was in the process of renovating their home using recycled fittings. “I’ve always been a conservationist and it’s far more creative for me to take an unused piece of garbage and make it beautiful, while also saving landfill space,” she says.

The hot Kaneohe sun prompted Deb to turn her collection of Hawaiian vintage dresses into skirts, allowing her to work in comfort. Deb, who learned how to sew by watching her mom make her dance costumes at age 3, would travel to Kailua to pick up parts for her house projects and admirers would often stop to ask about her tropical duds.

“Seventeen or more people in one day commented on my skirt, and after the final person ran down the beach to tell me, Eric said, ‘I think you better make more skirts,’” recounts Deb.

But selling her work didn’t come until years later. Deb often created skirts as gifts for friends and in January 2005, she took 12 pieces to the then-Kahala Mandarin to meet a girlfriend for her birthday. She told the pal to pick one as a present, and that’s when movie actress Eva Mendes walked by. “She was doing a press junket there, and she and Amber Valletta and Will Smith and a bunch of people bought everything that I had made, ordered more stuff, and had us come out to L.A.,” says Deb. Not bad for a first sale.

Her part-time job at the Honolulu Academy of Arts generated a local fashion buzz, too. Co-workers would congregate at Deb’s house for parties, but guests ended up spending most of their time in her closet. Demand for her creations got so high that in September 2005 she started throwing skirt parties to the public. Deb quit her job at the Academy a month later, partly because she was eight months pregnant with their son, Zachariah.

Word of the Muumuu Queen spread fast—and without the help of advertising. “I think our first customers had such a fun, authentic time at our home studio that they told their good friends traveling to Hawaii to check us out, and it steamrolled from there,” says Eric, who co-owns the business with Deb. “It was like a fun little secret being passed around.”

In November 2005, Muumuu Heaven’s Web site was launched and began selling product online. “At the time we had customers from California and most of the western states on the U.S. mainland, so we wanted to stay top of mind with them,” says Eric. “Plus we knew muumuuheaven.com would be a great calling card for our brand, especially for those finding out about us outside of Hawaii.”

The site was also designed to optimize search-engine results. Eric explains, “One example is coding the Web site with actual text, instead of a JPEG image of text whenever possible. That way, search engines can pick out key words from pages all over your site. Submitting a site map to Google and similar companies is also a good idea.” Soon after the launch, they started to see mentions of muumuuheaven.com on green blogs and other Web sites.

Then, in the fall of 2006, Hana Hou (Hawaiian Airlines’ in-flight magazine) ran an article and published Muumuu Heaven’s office phone number. “We had tourists calling us when they got off their Chicago flight and pulling up at our house around 7 a.m. asking to come in,” says Deb, who mentions that she’s also literally sold skirts off her body.

After this, they switched to appointment-only sales. “I don’t think we ever had anyone leave without a purchase. Our customers would either buy 2 or 3 skirts each. Sometimes they went a little overboard with excitement and one time I remember a lady buying about 17,” says Deb.

The thought of opening a retail store wasn’t necessarily their idea, either. Kaneohe Ranch approached Muumuu Heaven as desired tenants, and the couple opened their Kailua outpost in February 2007. “We were already in business and the retail store was a needed piece of the puzzle,” says Eric. “Due to the increasing demand and the fact that we were working from home, it was overdue.” To make sure the store opened as soon as possible, Eric quit his day job as an advertising executive a month before the store opened, and continues to manage the business and marketing aspects of the company.

Today, Muumuu Heaven and its word-of-mouth appeal show no signs of slowing down. In fact, a recently published Lucky Magazine article, which featured one of Deb’s summer strap tops, has flooded her inbox with customer emails from as far as Germany and Japan.

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