Timing proved ripe for flower business
By Frank Cho
Advertiser Staff Writer
Dawn is just cracking over Hilo and Harold T. Tanouye Jr. has already been at work at his Big Island flower business for two hours.
Kevin Dayton • The Honolulu Advertiser
Raised during World War II, the former tire repairman is no stranger to hard work or long hours. But at 67 years old, he knows he can no longer do much of the heavy work on the farm. Still, he shows up each day, even if it is more for his workers than for himself.
Harold Tanouye Jr., 67, has learned many lessons in the ups and downs of Hawai'i's business cycles. But he seized on opportunities that came up, making his Green Point Nursery one of the state's fastest growing flower businesses.
"I want to be the first on the premise and I want the people to know that I'm willing to work just like they do," said Tanouye, president of Green Point Nursery.
Started 25 years ago, Green Point has grown to become one of the state's largest and fastest growing flower businesses with more than 40 employees and nearly $4.5 million in sales this year, up 7 percent from a year ago.
The growth for the company hasn't been mistake-free and Tanouye has learned many lessons in the ups and downs of Hawai'i's business cycles. One of the most important is to constantly look for opportunities in business — no matter where they are or how bad the economy, Tanouye said.
"If you are really an entrepreneur, you won't fit into the regimented environment of a traditional workplace," Tanouye said. "So no matter how constrained the economy may seem to be, there is always room for good businessmen."
As a youngster, Tanouye spent much of his time in the family garden or pulling weeds for neighbors and friends. While his two younger brothers played sports or went fishing with his sisters, Tanouye learned about plants and flowers that grew well along the Big Island's lush eastern coast.
While attending Grinnell College, a small liberal arts school in Grinnell, Iowa, Tanouye remembers his mother would send him flowers. The flowers brought a little bit of Hawai'i to Tanouye as he weathered Iowa's severe winters.
"The flowers were a big hit with everyone there, especially the anthuriums. They would put them out for display and people would come from all around to look at these strange flowers. Of course, that left an impression on me," Tanouye said.
After graduating with a history degree, he returned to Hilo to work at his father's tire-repair business.
"That was kind of ironic. It was not what I expected to do after college, but being a history major makes you very adaptable," Tanouye said.
Knowing he wanted something else in life, Tanouye waited until his younger brothers returned from college and took over the family tire business. Once free, he looked around for a product he could sell on the Mainland.
"There was not too much opportunity. The economy in Hilo was very bad so I knew I wanted something I could export," he said.
"Most flower operations on the Big Island at the time were being operated out of people's homes or their back yard. But I thought growing and exporting flowers could become a real business, not something people did part time," Tanouye said.
Tanouye knew he was right when he found a 1963 research paper at the University of Hawai'i by Edmund R. Barmettler and Thomas Sheehan entitled "A Budgetary Analysis for Large-scale Anthurium Operations in Hawai'i." It was the road map he had been looking for.
Tanouye, along with two investors who put up much of the $30,000 seed money, decided to start an anthurium farm on three acres of leased land — known more for growing sugar than flower exports. He called it Hawaiian Heart.
To find customers, he placed ads in floral magazines on the Mainland, wrote letters and called wholesalers. The only problem was he did not yet have any flowers to sell. Tanouye and his partners chose to grow anthuriums because the beautiful red flower always seemed to be in short supply.
However, Tanouye knew that anthuriums typically grow in the shade of tall ferns and it could take two years to grow enough ferns to start an anthurium farm.
"That was a long time to wait if you are trying to start a business," Tanouye said. So he got the idea to create artificial shade by building "shade houses" out of metal poles, wire and polypropylene material. He saved money by buying used equipment and then built the shade houses himself.
That first year in business, 1965, Hawaiian Heart brought in $25,000 in sales. By the mid 1970s, the company had reached more than $500,000 in sales annually.
Tanouye credits his early success to three things: attention to detail, training employees properly to do their jobs and presentation.
"Finding talent for midlevel managers is one of my greatest challenges," Tanouye said. "Many young people today often go into state government because of the good benefits. Boy, I guess I would love to have lifetime medical coverage, too, if I could."
Tanouye said he left the company in 1977 after he and other board members differed over the future direction of Hawaiian Heart. After his departure, he again started a business from scratch — Green Point Nursery.
"We called it Green Point to remind us that the point of our company was green as in flowers and ferns," Tanouye said.
With a $300,000 small business loan from Bank of Hawaii, Tanouye acquired 30 acres of state leasehold land and began building the infrastructure for a new nursery.
"A lot of the money went into basic infrastructure like water and electricity," Tanouye said.
In fact, the initial investment was so large he could no longer afford to buy cuts of anthurium flowers to start his own nursery. The alternative was to travel to Florida and purchase crates of leather ferns, a foliage popular with florists in the flower arrangements.
"It was disappointing, but I had a job to do and a family to feed so we did it," Tanouye said.
The leather ferns flourished for several years. Then in 1980, contaminated fungicide nearly wiped out Tanouye's crop.
"The leather foliage would just not grow," Tanouye said. With bills piling up and money running out, Tanouye severely reduced expenses.
"I don't really know how I did it; it was just really a matter of survival at that point," Tanouye said. Eventually, he regained his financial footing.
Tanouye says small business owners need to know accounting.
"You have to know accounting because you have to have a plan in business and accounting is a disciplined way of organizing, controlling and running a business," Tanouye said.
By 1983, plant cloning technology had advanced to the point where Tanouye did not have to buy cuts of anthuriums from other growers and could clone his own flowers.
Green Point hit the $1 million mark in sales soon after and reached more than $4 million in flower sales last year.
"You've always got to look at the alternatives," Tanouye said. "Businessmen are ubiquitous in the sense that they can succeed in any social, economic or political environment."
