Seeing is believing in Juniroa

By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer

Heather Giugni and Esther Figueroa started their company, Juniroa Productions, not to make money but to be of service to the Hawaiian community.

Esther Figueroa, left, and Heather Giugni run their multi-media company, Juniroa Productions Inc., from a Chinatown penthouse. Some of the visual media they produce include developing DVDs and Web-site content for a variety of clients. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

Juniroa Productions has made a name for itself in the Islands as the creator of numerous documentaries, short videos and education tapes for and about the Hawaiian community. Topics include a 13-part health series, features on Hawaiian arts, culture and kupuna, and training materials on integrating Hawaiian values into classroom teaching.

But Giugni and Figueroa have helped feed their passion by developing other sources of income, including writing, shooting and editing commercial videos; creating content for Web sites; renting out their state-of-the-art editing and camera equipment; and, more recently, developing expertise in DVD production for customers including Hawaii Stars Presents.

Juniroa's ability to keep one foot in the documentary realm and one in the commercial world has impressed both customers and competitors — especially since many others in the video business choose to either focus on content or specialize in the service and technology side, says Greg Davis, president of Island Post & Graphics, a video post-production company in Kaka'ako.

"Their hearts may be in issue-oriented or community-oriented documentary types of work, but the reality is that not everybody can survive only on that," Davis said of Juniroa.

"So adapting their tools and their skills to a broader audience has helped them to stay in the game and still be able to pursue their first love. They've been pragmatic enough to open things up and provide services for and seek projects that will help pay the rent and the cost of keeping up with technology and all of that."

"I don't know two harder-working people," said Maile Meyer, president of Native Books Kapalama, which distributes some of Juniroa's educational videos. "We distribute their Enduring Pride series and educational videos, as well as some of their commercial stuff. They're steady sellers. These ladies are hustlers in the nice sense of the word — not hustling, but moving quickly. Meanwhile, to pay the rent they are out shooting anything that falls from the trees. And that's another form of hustling."

Giugni, a graduate of Kamehameha Schools, honed her interest in storytelling first as a journalism major at the University of Maryland and then as a producer at KGMB-TV in the early 1980s. She wanted to move into camera work and directing, but at that time saw few opportunities for women locally in those roles. An offer to produce a promotional video for Alu Like, an organization providing services to Native Hawaiians, gave her the chance she needed to strike out on her own in 1986.

"Alu Like was the introduction into the whole concept of being able to do it on my own and do it successfully and get paid for it," said Giugni, the company's president and general manager.

Figueroa, who serves as producer, writer and editor, brings a different sort of expertise to Juniroa. An academic with a Ph.D. in socio-linguistics from Georgetown University, her experience includes writing, working with educators, developing curricula and teaching.

"We have complementary styles," said Figueroa, who met Giugni in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s. "Heather tends to be a bit more intuitive and maybe nonlinear. She's a bit more right-brain; she's left-handed; she's an artist. I'm a bit more analytical; I come from an academic background; I'm a writer.

"I can organize things, I can see the beginning, middle and end. I can plan, I have a sense of how long things take," Figueroa said. "Heather's strength might be seeing where technology is going or having a sense of what is the next trend or inspiring people or convincing people — that kind of thing. So it balances out."

In the company's early years, building revenues was not the focus. The pair worked from their home and rented the equipment they needed to produce their growing list of video projects.

"I didn't really ever consider it as a job, because I had so much fun doing it," Giugni said.

In 1990, however, the duo realized that most of their revenues were going back out the door in the form of equipment rental, so, with $7,000 borrowed from Giugni's parents, they bought a low-end camera, two VCRs and an editing machine.

The money they saved in rental costs allowed them to pay back the loan in two months, Giugni said. As their revenues grew, they plowed more money back into equipment.

"Instead of going to someone else and giving them $50,000, we would just upgrade our equipment and be able to do it in-house," she said.

Juniroa took a giant step forward in 1994 with the purchase of a $59,000 AVID editing machine. Unwilling to add security features to their home to protect their investment, Giugni and Figueroa decided to form a partnership with Island Post. They moved into that company's space, sharng clients and revenues. Working with another company also helped Juniroa develop business expertise, Giugni said.

In 1998 Juniroa's gross sales had reached $275,300 — more than six times the company's 1988 total of $42,570. Ready to establish their identity apart from Island Post, that year Giugni and Figueroa moved their company to an airy Nu'uanu Avenue space in Chinatown.

Like many other Hawai'i companies, Juniroa Productions suffered a drop in business after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Sept. 11 hurt," Giugni said. "It is just a fact of life that people are going to stop dollars running into this area first — advertising and so forth. But that's one of the things about challenges, that it offers you the opportunity to be even more creative."

Since the attacks, Juniroa's creativity has taken the form of several new partnerships. These include working with Golf Hawaii to produce a series for the Golf Channel, partnering with Hawaii Stars Presents to create programming on DVD, and doing shooting, editing and graphics for the hotel convention programming produced by Convention Television.

"So there's that revenue stream," Giugni said. "This is all post-9/11. So we're not just basing it strictly on creating graphics or commercial spots, but we're now diversifying even more." Projected revenues for this year are $250,000, up from $329,4000 last year.

Even as it branches out into new commercial areas, however, Juniroa continues to develop the work closest to the hearts of its founders. Among its projects, the company is putting the finishing touches on an educational DVD about U.S Sen. Dan Inouye that it expects to have ready in April.

The project includes interviews with other politicians and other journalists, copies of many of Inouye's speeches and a timeline placing Inouye's years in the Senate in the context of the country's history.

With its wealth of material accessible to teachers and students in both video and print form, the project showcases the broad capabilities of the DVD medium, Giugni says.

The piece is especially dear to Giugni because her father, Henry Giugni, was Inouye's chief of staff from 1963 to 1986.

Giugni and Figueroa are realistic about what it takes in today's world to keep their company going.

"When you're talking about business in Hawai'i, you need to think of different avenues," Giugni said. "You can't just be one kind of thing, although you'd like to be. Because people can't afford just one thing. They need to have a graphic designer who also edits. And then they say, 'Well, now you've done our video, but we want you to put it into Quicktime so we can put it on our Web site.' "

Reach Susan Hooper at 525-8064 or shooper@honoluluadvertiser.com.