Island People
Cinnamon Girl fashion stays close to its roots
By Paula Rath
Advertiser Staff Writer
It's hard to get personal with Jonelle Fujita. Every time you think you're getting close, talk about the business crops up again. She seems to have difficulty separating herself from her clothing company, Cinnamon Girl.
Kyle Sackowski • The Honolulu Advertiser
Yet it's not surprising. Fujita created the business in her likeness: feminine, pretty and smart. Very smart.
Jonelle Fujita and daughter Jolie wear mother-daughter dresses from Cinnamon Girl, a clothing company founded by Fujita. The business is growing but still but run rather like a cottage industry.
Although Cinnamon Girl is now a Hawai'i retail success story — with freestanding stores, wholesale accounts, and an eye toward expanding to the Mainland — the company hasn't strayed far from its roots. It's still run rather like a cottage industry, with family members providing manpower for everything from manufacturing to delivery.
The twist is that Fujita didn't set out to be in the fashion industry. "I loved fashion but didn't think I could make a career of it," she said. When she was growing up her mother, Barbara Okumura, thought she would become an engineer.
But Okumura had underestimated the influence she had on her daughter.
Fujita remembers watching her mother make crochet handbags and macrame items to sell at craft fairs. "My mother was always doing batik and other 'hippie' crafts," she recalled. She remembers her mother also making matching mother-daughter crochet and tie-dye tops.
When Fujita was in third grade, her aunt, Shirley Cubio, taught her to sew. Then she went to sewing classes with a Mrs. Sato in Kaimuki (Fujita can't remember the name of the school) followed by pattern-making classes with Jane Miho.
Fujita began making doll clothes with a passion, creating mother-daughter sets echoing her mother's creations.
After graduating from Mid-Pacific Institute in 1984, Fujita attended the University of Hawai'i, earning a degree in sociology in 1989. Her plan was to become a counselor. However, a short stint as a volunteer with the Suicide and Crisis Center made it clear "that wasn't for me."
She then set her energies to a string of potential careers: real estate sales, insurance agency work, hotels.
By this time she was in a committed relationship with Reid Fujita, a communications major she met when a senior at UH, and they married in 1996.
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| Jolie Fujita wears rose petal slippers made by her grandmother.
Kyle Sackowski • The Honolulu Advertiser |
"But we always dragged our family and friends along to help us," Fujita recalled, laughing.
Fujita's closest childhood friend, Shawn Pepe-Ito, now a Los Angeles jewelry designer, recalls Fujita's work ethic: "She'd have an eight-hour-a-day job and then, on the side, she'd be doing another business."
That is why Pepe-Ito is not surprised by her friend's commercial success. "She's a 'Just do it' person. She would just go for it, whatever it was, and say 'Do it, then we'll figure it out.' She never thinks, 'Oh, God, it might not work.' "
She recalled one time many years ago when the Fujitas had a malassada booth at the Blaisdell Center. They could not anticipate the success of their sweet treat. By 10 a.m., they had run out. Rather than closing down, Jonelle Fujita ran to the grocery store, bought all the ingredients, talked the folks at Bobby McGee's restaurant in Waikiki (where Reid had been employed as a waiter) into letting her use the kitchen, and made another batch of batter.
"She's always been a rock," Pepe-Ito said. "Her whole life has been working, working, working. One business after another. One success after another."
Fashion as passion
After years of career experiments, "I realized I should just do something I really, really loved doing," Fujita said. That's when, in 1993, she started designing and making clothing for sale at craft fairs.
She set out to create a "beach, sun and surf line. But then I realized that wasn't really me, and it would be better to do what I really like. So I started making sundresses and mother-daughter dresses."
She called her line Cinnamon Girl "because I wanted a name that was warm and sunny. It's also got a homespun ring to it. I want people to feel comfortable and at home in my stores," Fujita said.
Her contemporary dresses could be described as a cross between the floral, romantic look of Laura Ashley and the edginess of Betsey Johnson.
Fujita used tax-return money and maxed out her credit cards to open a kiosk at Aloha Tower Marketplace. "It was really hard at first, because no one knew who I was and I couldn't afford any advertising. I was about ready to give up when, all of a sudden, it caught on."
Island women and visitors alike began to snap up the feminine, flattering styles.
In 1994, after a year in the kiosk, Cinnamon Girl opened its first store at Aloha Tower Marketplace. Fujita kept the store open through February 1996.
In November 1995, Cinnamon Girl opened in Ward Warehouse. That store doubled in size in 1996.
A year later a Waikiki store was added, followed by a Maui store in 1998 and an Ala Moana Center store, on the then-new third floor, in 1999.
When DFS Galleria Waikiki reopened, Cinnamon Girl wholesaled dresses in the Pikake Plantation section of the store alongside Tori Richard, Kahala and Tommy Bahama. DFS buyer Brooke Honda said the local company is "the only vendor beating their planned sales" this year. She said the line is popular with the Japanese customer who wants to buy a Hawai'i-made garment but doesn't want "the strictly aloha look."
Fujita is now looking seriously at real estate in Las Vegas and California, planning a Mainland launch of Cinnamon Girl.
A family affair
Although Cinnamon Girl is a big business by Hawai'i standards, Fujita still operates it like a small family-owned company.
Her husband, Reid, handles all the advertising and marketing. Reid's parents make the flower-embellished slippers. Jonelle's sister manages the warehouse. Reid's sister and her husband make gift items that are sold in the stores. Jonelle's friend, Pepe-Ito, makes the jewelry. Jonelle's mother and sister craft hair accessories.
Fujita says she is committed to keeping her business in Hawai'i. She has 12 seamstresses working full time as well as contract seamstresses sewing some simpler styles. She has an in-house textile designer but often creates her own designs as well. The fabrics are printed in Turkey.
Until recently, Reid and Jonelle Fujita were still accustomed to working from from sunup to after sundown seven days a week.
The Fujitas live in a big, rambling house in Kane'ohe with two dogs, a big yard and a pool. Jonelle now spends any free time gardening, painting furniture and playing with Jolie.
The couple still loves to travel. They visit France, Japan, New York and Los Angeles to track trends and ideas for the Cinnamon Girl line.
Of her daughter, Jonelle Fujita says, "Yes, she slowed us down a little. But it had to happen.Now we balance our lives and try not to work weekends, and get home at a decent hour."
