Hanging on, like a Kamehameha silkie
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Brad Walker flipped through a rack of vintage clothes that traces Kamehameha Garment Co.'s place through aloha shirt history. He pulled out an old "silkie" from the 1940s, or possibly the 1930s.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
The green shirt was tattered around the edges and split at the seams, not unlike some of the recent hard times that hit the 67-year-old company.
Brad Walker, owner of Kamehameha Garment Co., acquired the business essentially for free 11 years ago when it was being dissolved. He's trying to save it by reviving the popularity of vintage aloha prints.
But Kamehameha Garment probably wouldn't have survived this long if it wasn't for its colorful and creative owner, said Jim Byrne, the president of Hawai'i Print Co., which at one point last year was owed $160,000 by Kamehameha for unpaid fabric orders.
Walker got the company essentially for free while it was being dissolved 11 years ago and is trying to save it by bringing back the vintage aloha prints of Kamehameha's early years.
"If Brad wasn't Brad, if he was somebody else, he'd probably be out of business today," Byrne said. "He's a talented, unique individual who's resilient and doesn't try to run and hide. The reason his suppliers haven't totally jumped on him is because we are somewhat sympathetic. But he also keeps reinventing himself and has something new and better to offer than the last version."
Walker in 2003 is certainly different from the Vietnam War protester — and son of a California Superior Court judge — who was arrested on five felony charges in 1970 for planting a phony bomb during anti-war riots in Los Angeles.
"Basically, it was a prank," Walker said. "We were just trying to play a joke on the cops."
He crewed a sailboat to Hawai'i three years later and found a new life. But even at the age of 53, Walker can still try to pull off some bad ideas.
He walked with a slight limp recently from an ill-advised attempt to conquer a skateboard ramp he'd just built in a storage area of his 7,800-square-foot Kalihi office. He's been married three times — currently to a 22-year-old woman who lives in Thailand — and carries an expansive waist under his aloha shirt.
Walker also worships the Rolling Stones and once told Jimmy Buffet that "anybody who can make a ton of money singing about drinking, sex and sailing's got my vote."
"Brad? Oy. What can I say," said David Bailey of Bailey's Antiques and Aloha Shirts on Kapahulu Avenue. "I like the guy but he's not your classic Bishop Street businessman."
Walker may have a good business idea, though.
Retro aloha shirts remain hot sellers at Bailey's store and represent half of his sales. Original shirts sometimes can go for thousands of dollars, Bailey said. And original Kamehameha shirts are especially coveted.
"Collectors want that Kamehameha label," Bailey said, "because they know they made high-end, really well-made shirts."
The company was founded in 1936 by Herbert Briner, a New York garment cutter dispatched by the May Co. to look into the colorful shirts arriving on the Mainland on the backs of men returning from Honolulu visits.
Briner died in 1965 and the company was sold to an Australian holding company, which saw sales fall over the years. Walker had started his own garment company focusing on girls' surfwear, Brown Sugar, and met Briner's widow, Millie, at a Honolulu fashion show. He fell in love with the idea of taking over the company and producing modern-day versions of the vintage Kamehameha line.
As Walker retooled Kamehameha, the company went from no sales in 1993 to $55,000 in 1994 to $250,000 in 1995. At one point in 1995, Mainland interests offered Walker $2 million for Kamehameha.
Instead, he opened his own retail store at Ward Centre in 1996, licensed a second one briefly in Lahaina and saw sales rise to a peak of $1.6 million in 2000. The following year, Forbes Magazine said Kamehameha Garment Co. made one of 50 "America's Best Products" — in the category of best tropical sport shirt.
Then the Japanese market that made up 50 percent of Kamehameha's sales plummeted. With the Sept. 11 attacks, overall sales fell even more and dropped to just under $600,000 in 2002. After Sept. 11, Walker couldn't find anyone interested in buying Kamehameha and owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills. Without fabric, he couldn't make shirts to keep money flowing.
Walker laid off the nine office and sales employees — manufacturing is done by three separate Honolulu companies — and seriously considered buying a one-way ticket to Thailand.
"I was thinking of pulling the plug," Walker said.
Then in September a Small Business Administration disaster relief loan came through. The $150,000 allowed Walker to pay some of his overdue bills and order new fabric.
"That loan," Walker said, "got me in the game again."
This year Kamehameha has seven new designs, and direct sales look good through the company's Web site — www.kamgarments.com. Walker projects $1 million in sales by the end of the year.
"People keep saying, 'I thought you were out of business,' " Walker said. "I say, 'We almost were. Now we're back.' "
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
