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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Couple juggle multiple businesses

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Jenny and Eddee Louie have spread their Chinatown photo operation into four separate directions and Jenny can feel the pressure of trying to keep track of them all.

Jenny Louie's skills in photo restorations are the basis for one of her business lines. She also does passport photos. Her husband, Eddee, prints menus and pamphlets and also runs a wedding photography business.

Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

"Too many things," she said simply, shaking her head at the thought of keeping everything together.

Jenny has found some comfort through the Small Business Administration's free workshops offering help on marketing, tax advice and writing business plans. But like business people everywhere, Jenny worries whether she and her husband are putting the right emphasis on the right parts of their business.

Most of their $60,000 annual sales — about 80 percent — come from Eddee's business of printing menus and brochures and his wedding photography operation. Jenny's passport photos account for 10 percent; her photo restoration business generates another 5 percent.

Five years ago, Eddee started making signs out of brass, plastic, vinyl and neon for business storefronts throughout Waikiki and downtown, including Chinatown, and saw the need to grow as old businesses failed and new ones started up.

The sign-making operation has the highest of the Louies' material costs and generates the remaining 5 percent of their business. But Eddee has made more than 100 signs so far and believes it has the biggest potential for growth.

Jenny isn't sure. But she's willing to give the sign-making business time.

Their combination of businesses represents the evolution of a husband-and-wife team that emigrated from China in the 1980s and has adjusted to Honolulu's changing economy.

Jenny, 42, used to take souvenir photographs of Japanese tourists throughout the 1990s. Eddee, 52, was a studio photographer who also had a Hong Kong-based business printing shopping bags for designer labels.

Today, their businesses are divided between Jenny's 300-square-foot storefront operation on North Hotel Street, where she makes passport photos and restores old photos, and Eddee's 300-square-foot upstairs workshop and studio, where he makes his signs, menus and brochures.

Eddee got his first taste of Hawai'i in 1980 while on a freelance photo assignment for High Times magazine to shoot Island-grown pakalolo. He also shuttled back and forth between an advertising job for a Waikiki Japanese restaurant and his Hong Kong printing business, churning out rack cards for tourists.

He met Jenny in 1988 while she worked as an assistant manager for a Chinese hotel and they married a year later in a Honolulu civil ceremony. Eddee photographed, laid out and printed brochures for businesses in Honolulu. Jenny took souvenir photos in Waikiki restaurants and showrooms until the Japanese tourism boom began to go bust.

Then seven years ago, Jenny gave birth to a boy, Wyllie, and wanted work with more steady hours.

"I tell her, 'I start a business for her,'" Eddee said. "'Don't work for other people.'"

They opened an upstairs business on North Hotel Street for passport photos, although the location wasn't good for walk-in trade. They also bought a used computer and photo software to digitally alter pictures.

Jenny's motivation to learn the software was twofold.

"I think I can save people's valuable pictures and make good money," she said.

Her first job six years ago was to restore the color in photos taken of a Vietnamese family during the Vietnam War. And their reaction made Jenny go on.

"They so happy," Jenny said. "You can see the tear in their eyes."

A year ago, the Louies moved to street level and the foot traffic increased, which bumped up both the passport and photo-restoration businesses.

As more Honolulu restaurants fail and new ones begin, Jenny hopes her husband's sign-making businesses picks up, too.

"It's scary," she said. "So much to worry about. But we try."

Her worries get alleviated somewhat with what they have learned through the Small Business Administration.

"They have person-to-person help," she said. "My English not so good, but they help. And there are so many things to learn."

The SBA's Chinatown Small Business Resource Center is at 1042 Nu'uanu Ave. and can be reached at 522-8130.