Sure Save stores see sales rise 19.6 percent

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

The 69-year-old Sure Save Super Market Ltd. stripped down its operations, emerged from bankruptcy in December and has seen its first-quarter sales up 19.6 percent compared with last year.

Company employees who had taken two pay cuts even saw a 3 percent raise in April.

The positive signs for the Big Island chain are as much a testament to making hard decisions as they are a statement about the stubbornness of Carl H. Okuyama, who refused to give up on one of the Big Island's oldest family-owned businesses.

Okuyama's grandfather Tomohide started the company in 1933 as Okuyama Meat Market. His father, Tom, steered it into the supermarket business in 1953 and Okuyama expanded into convenience stores in 1978.

"Most people would say, 'Give it up. Give it up,'" said Richard Botti, president of the Hawaii Food Industry Association. "Not Carl. He refused to give up. Carl has done a phenomenal job in rebuilding almost from scratch."

At its high point in 1997, Sure Save operated 14 super markets and convenience stores on the Big Island and had sales of $16 million. But a $6 million purchase of a food distribution center in Kea'au in 1993 cost Sure Save the capital to invest in inventory.

"The company received no return on that $6 million," said Okuyama, Sure Save's president and CEO. "You used to go to our convenience stores and not even find a pack of Kools. It was sad. It was really sad. That was the beginning of a 7-year slide."

The company also faced increasing pressure from big-box retailers.

Workers took a 5 percent pay cut in 1995 and took another 10 percent hit in 1997. In 1999, Okuyama himself took a 30 percent pay cut just before Sure Save filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, listing debts of between $10 million and $50 million.

Under bankruptcy, Sure Save went from 14 stores — five supermarkets, one neighborhood market in Na'alehu, six Wiki Wiki convenience stores and two video stores — to one supermarket, Na'alehu's Island Market and four Wiki Wiki stores.

The number of employees also fell from 220 to 118 today.

"We had to prove that our company was worth more alive than dead," Okuyama said.

Sure Save began retooling.

It sold a one-acre undeveloped parcel that had been planned for another Wiki Wiki market, sold the fee-simple title on an existing Wiki Wiki market and leased the property back. Most important of all, the company sold the distribution center for $4 million.

And Okuyama changed the focus of his company. "We're now out of the traditional supermarket mode," he said.

Sure Save will divide into three new companies, each under the Sure Save banner. One will be in charge of the convenience stores, another will run the neighborhood market in Na'alehu and the third will oversee a new specialty market in Keau, where the last remaining Sure Save supermarket sits.

The new philosophies make sense to Curtis Beck, manager of Hawaiian Electric Co.'s services department. HECO was one of Sure Save's biggest creditors and was owed $1.1 million in electric bills.

"We do want this business to survive," Beck said. "It's better for the Big Island to encourage businesses to prosper, rather than just have them go under and leave large debts outstanding."

Still, Okuyama doesn't believe the company has turned around yet.

In company e-mails and letters to customers, he refers to the current incarnation of Sure Save as being in "2nd Gear." "It's no fun being in reverse for seven years," he said. "At the same time, we don't want to raise false hopes that we're in overdrive or even fourth gear. We're in second gear."