Shop finds niche in local styles
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Laraine Tanabe used to wake her daughter, Valerie, early on the weekends to begin scouring craft fairs all over town, mostly just to look at the ever-changing selection of merchandise.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
They were the memories that Valerie Yamashita took with her into adulthood and shaped her philosophy of running a business based on the kind of merchandise found only at craft fairs.
Valerie Yamashita, owner of Craft Flair at Ward Warehouse, runs her business based on the kind of merchandise found only at craft fairs. She started selling local artists' work on consignment in 1991 and now sells a variety of crafts produced by 24 artists. Her manager, Jennifer Farm-Theros, is in the background.
"Everybody has a clothing store where you'll find the same shirt everybody else is wearing," Yamashita said. "I wanted something different — a craft fair with the convenience of a retail store."
Craft Flair, located at the bottom of Ward Warehouse, was born 12 years ago out of Yamashita's experiences shopping with her mother and her early retail training working for Hawaiian Island Creations and later at Duty Free Shoppers, now DFS-Hawai'i.
Like most small business owners getting started, Yamashita worked seven days a week and also frequently traveled to the Mainland searching for unusual clothes, jewelry and other items to fill her store. Revenue steadily increased and has since more than tripled to over $500,000 last year.
But along with steady business growth, something else kind of nice happened.
Valerie Tanabe got married and became Valerie Yamashita, had two children and decided that running a business wasn't so important, after all.
"I realized my kids are only young once," said Yamashita, now 36.
She's still the heart of Craft Flair but only works the sales floor three days a week. The upstairs loft that serves as both a storage area and Yamashita's office is now lined with pictures of her 6-year-old daughter, Kyla, and 16-month-old son, Ty.
It all began for Yamashita at the age of 25, with almost no capital.
Instead, she invited local artists to a meeting at the Ala Moana Hotel and agreed to sell their merchandise on consignment. She took out a lease on a 710-square-foot spot in Ward Centre in 1991. The renovations were paid for by the Hustace family, which controlled Ward Centre at the time.
The diamondhead end of Ward Centre wasn't nearly as busy as it is today and customers only trickled in. Those who did found a mix of Asian-style jackets and dresses and high-end sequined T-shirts.
Although business started slowly, Yamashita remained patient. She had laminated an article from a women's magazine entitled "How To Succeed In Business" and highlighted the point that said a business needs at least two years before it generates a profit.
So she used the proceeds from the sale of her Waikiki condominium to regularly pump $1,000 to $2,000 into Craft Flair each month, waiting for her client base to build.
And it did.
Craft Flair's niche — especially after moving to a bigger, 930-square-foot store in Ward Centre in 1996 — came from catering to local shoppers looking for something unusual.
"We're popular with people who can look at a hand-pained T-shirt and not say, 'What? Forty-two dollars for a T-shirt,' " Yamashita said.
The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks crippled Waikiki and Hawai'i's tourism industry for months but had little affect on Yamashita's sales.
Her biggest drop in sales instead came five months before during the state-wide teachers' strike.
"We're definitely not aimed at tourists," Yamashita said.
This year sales are up 27 percent from last year. And Yamashita's store is full of kimono jackets, glass earrings, baskets, photo albums and other crafts made by 24 different artists, who no longer work on consignment.
Some of the merchandise isn't cheap at all. T-shirts decorated in Austrian crystals, for instance, go for $48.60.
But they're popular with customers who have shopped at Craft Flair for years.
"There's no other store like it," said Robyn Furuya, a customer since January 1992 who estimates she spends more than $1,000 every year at Yamashita's store.
"I go there when I have a special occasion, and I want something unique you won't find in a normal retail outlet," Furuya said. "Valerie's always changing her stock, and it's fun to go see what's new."
Furuya even finds nice dresses and jackets for her daughters, who are only 4 and 1.
"The staff gets to know you, too," Furuya said. "If you tell them you need something for a certain occasion, they'll recommend things that will look good on you, and they're usually right."
Ellen Suhl came to rely on the line of K.D. Spring dresses Yamashita sells.
"Every time I wear her dresses," Suhl said, "somebody says, 'Where did you get that?' I tell them Craft Flair."
When Suhl crushed her leg in 20 places after falling from a stool, Yamashita not only called Suhl to tell her when a new line of dresses came in but also walked them out to Suhl's car.
"You just can't find service like that," Suhl said.
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
