When the governor takes a meeting at the trendy Fresh Café in the midst of Kakaako’s gritty warren of body shops and warehouses, something big is cooking. When the meeting includes a major landowner and innovators from the community, you can bet…
The next time you forward an image to your communications person or a magazine editor, have a heart. Even though publication professionals often can make something wonderful with very little raw material, they can’t create a story where there isn’t…
Sam Craig thought it would be a great team-building activity for his HMSA colleagues to compete in last year’s Startup Weekend Honolulu. He didn’t expect to win. “We came in on Friday with a team and that’s it,” says Craig,…
Owning a franchise is always hard work, but here’s how to avoid the hellish pain and reap the heavenly rewards David and Carla Lehn were first-time franchisees who hoped that by purchasing the only Quiznos fast-food restaurant on Kauai, they…
Log in to view the Hawaii Business Top 250 - 2012 list. Not subscribed? Sign up here. Welcome to the Hawaii Business Top 250, the most comprehensive ranking of Hawaii’s business elite. We list local companies based on annual gross…
It’s a hot Thursday and state Rep. Chris Lee is sitting in traffic trying to get out of Lanikai, his home neighborhood in Kailua. It’s 2:30 p.m., and Kailua and Lanikai beaches are still full of people, but cars trying…
Tanna and Bryson Dang operate a popular women’s clothing boutique called Eden in Love at Ward Warehouse, and have been planning for a year to sell products online. Their site, edeninlove.com, was set to go live on Sunday, April 22, the…
Before Bill Jarvis took the helm seven years ago at Mobi PCS, a Hawaii-based wireless phone company, he had spent two decades working for other, bigger national brands. So he knew what not to do. “We could really study the category…
Margaret Larson has felt “range anxiety.” If you buy an electric vehicle in the near future, you will feel it, too. Larson is the electric vehicle specialist for the state Energy Office and was driving the state’s Nissan Leaf electric car back…
Eric Yeaman runs Hawaiian Telcom, Gene Awakuni leads UH-West Oahu, Karl Fujii is VP and CFO of Hawaiian Building Maintenance, John Komeiji is senior VP and general counsel at Hawaiian Telcom, andRobbie Alm is executive VP at Hawaiian Electric. The common thread? They’re all…
"Let me frame healthcare for you in a big way,” says Josh Green, state senator from Hawaii Island. “The big picture is that the rate of increase in the cost of healthcare is unsustainable. The U.S. is spending $3 trillion…
Ten experts in local healthcare joined in a wide-ranging, two-hour public forum on healthcare costs, quality of care, needed innovations and the future of healthcare. Here is an abbreviated transcript of that discussion. Click here for the full transcript. Hawaii Business, ThinkTech…
When Todd Yamanaka joined Island Insurance 11 years ago, the company’s website,www.islandinsurance.com, was essentially a tool that shared basic information about the company’s products. That was it. Needless to say, the site didn’t rank at the top in search results,…
Chinese visitors in their 20s and 30s. At least I assumed they were Chinese and, judging from their features, probably from the northwest provinces of China. But when we reached a security checkpoint, they pulled out their Mongolian passports. (Please,…
Though it was an ocean away, the devastating earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear crisis that ravaged northeastern Japan in March 2011 struck Hawaii in the heart. People all over the world grieved over the magnitude of the tragedy, but it…
There are two ways to reach Molokai’s isolated settlement of Kalaupapa. You can ride a mule or walk along the 3.2-mile trail that descends the 1,700-foot cliff along 26 switchbacks, or you can fly. Those are the only ways to…
At first glance, Hawaii Fish Co. in Mokuleia doesn’t look like a hotbed of innovation. For more than 20 years, owner Ron Weidenbach has run a simple operation, raising tilapia in floating cages in the deep waters of an old…
Eric Tessem founded Construction Associates Inc. in the Pacific Northwest and led it for 22 years before joining Ledcor Construction in 2003. He now heads the Honolulu office of dck. YOU STARTED YOUR OWN BUSINESS, CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATES. WHAT’S THE MOST…
NAME: Sharon Mujtabaa JOB: President, Hawaii Court Reporters and Captioners Association; owner, The Caption Co. EXPERIENCE: 15 years in captioning, nine years as a court reporter STARTING OUT: When Mujtabaa went to court-reporting school in Chicago, she loved it all,…
Tim Johns has had an eclectic career. He recently became a senior VP at HMSA and was co-chair of the APEC Hawaii Host Committee. Previously, he served as CEO ofBishop Museum, COO of the Damon Estate, VP of Amfac, chairman…
Thirty-six years ago, a designer on the North Shore walked into Matsumoto Shave Ice in Haleiwa and told the family he wanted to design a T-shirt for them. Just for them to wear, not to sell. Stanley Matsumoto, now the…
Afraid to make money? Are you recklessly sabotaging your financial security? Can’t bear to spend a penny, even though you have plenty of wealth? If any of this sounds familiar, Brad Klontz can help. Just as people develop personality traits from their life…
On weekends, Jeffrey Shonka likes to rip along the south shore of Oahu in his 20-foot Seaswirl speedboat. “Fifty-six [mph] is the fastest I’ve had it up to,” says Shonka, CFO of First Insurance Co. “At that point, my wife,…
The technical term is “vertical integration,” and what it simply means is that you create your own raw materials, process them in-house and sell the finished products directly to the public. It’s a huge challenge to do it all yourself,…