Change helps build businessman's sense

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Albert Perkins started a disco dance party business as a Kamehameha Schools student, bought his first house in Kailua at the age of 19, and saw his subsequent real-estate investment company soar to $5 million in net worth, only to take him to the brink of bankruptcy.

In the past nine years, Albert Perkins, 28, has bought, sold and renovated 30 Windward rental homes while holding two full-time jobs. He now owns Wines & Designs, which resells wine to businesses in customized bottles. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

As he bought, sold and renovated 30 Windward rental homes in the past nine years, Perkins simultaneously worked two full-time jobs — as an adult corrections officer at the Women's Correctional Center in Kailua, and as a flight coordinator for Aloha Airlines. Then a back injury last year laid him up for three months, sending his one-man real-estate operation into a financial free fall. Perkins had not taken out disability insurance on himself.

"Nobody ever thinks that at the age of 27 you're going to be hurt and laid up," he said.

In the past few months, he has bought two companies and is negotiating to buy a third, including one that sells liquor with customized labels for restaurants, hotels and other Hawai'i businesses. Perkins doesn't drink alcohol and has not tasted any of the 460 brands of wine and liquors he sells.

Along the way, Perkins got married in July. He and his wife, Keala Naluai, live with his parents in Kailua, helping to take care of them.

To Perkins, his life makes sense. Even though he has seen sudden success and near business failure, he said he knows what's important: "All I know is work and taking care of my family."

When he met Perkins, who had been wrapping macadamia nut chocolates with customized labels, chocolate factory owner Art Low saw a glimpse of himself.

And the more that Low saw, the more he became interested in selling his business.

"He's motivated," Low said of Perkins. "He's aggressive, definitely. It takes one to know one. ... Basically a good businessman is like a caterpillar: You keep changing. That's what drives our economy. If entrepreneurs don't keep changing, our economy will stay stagnant."

Stagnation is one thing Perkins will never be guilty of.

As a Kamehameha freshman, he earned $20 on weekends deejaying for a mobile disco operation. His parents bankrolled his equipment, and soon Perkins was bringing in $400 each weekend and hiring his own staff of teenage disc jockeys.

He had once overheard his father, Albert Sr., tell his mother he would never be able to buy homes for all three of the boys. The thought began to nag at Perkins, and he decided to buy his own house.

He worked out a lease-option deal on a ramshackle nine-bedroom rental property in Coconut Grove, and got his parents to co-sign the $1,400 monthly mortgage. The property generated $4,200 a month in rent.

Even though he couldn't pound a nail straight, Perkins soon learned how to renovate rental homes for profit, and at one point was collecting $150,000 a month in rent from mostly low-income tenants.

Last year, Perkins invited 60 real-estate professionals to a wine tasting put on by a company that offered customized bottle labels. Perkins was so impressed, he invested $20,000 to buy the company and expanded it from five customers to more than 300 today.

Although he was burdened by debt and capital gains taxes on the rental properties he was selling, Perkins quickly made $25,000 in the first two months of the wine business. Because he bought wholesale, even a 10 percent down payment from a hotel or restaurant covered his costs for each shipment.

He has since bought Custom Badge and Awards on North King Street and plans to use the company's laser equipment to engrave the high-end wine bottles. He's also talking to Low about buying Low's chocolate factory to complement the other two businesses.

These days, Perkins is getting out of real estate and concentrating on his new businesses. He tools between the different companies in a cobalt-blue Corvette. It's a racy car that — because of Perkins' injured back — is outfitted with a blue handicapped parking placard.

For Perkins, it all somehow makes sense.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.