By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

You wouldn't suspect that Hilo Hattie's, the largest manufacturer of Hawaiian fabrics in the world with 500 employees and cutting tables that slice out 2,000 garments at a time, started in a foot locker aboard a yacht.

Founder Jim Romig has finally come clean and confessed. It's high time he did. The company has turned 40.

It all started when he quit a good job at Boeing in Seattle after being drafted in 1960. Then the draft board turned him down. With no job, Romig set off around the world. In Hawai'i, he talked himself into a job as first mate on board movie director John Ford's yacht, Araner, at the Ala Wai Boat Harbor.

Capt. Rip Yeager paid him $200 a month and worked him six days a week for five years. During the week, Romig hobnobbed with such Ford guests as John Wayne, Richard Boone, Ward Bond, Henry Fonda and Julie Andrews. On his days off, he repaired yachts to pay for the next leg of his world tour.

First stop, Papeete. Romig was there for three wonderful months — spending every night at Quinn's Bar — and fell in love with Tahiti. Then he worked on oyster boats in New Zealand and ranches in Australia. By the time he arrived back in Hawai'i via Siberia and the south of France he was broke.

Yeager took him back for the same $200 a month. How to make some extra money? Romig remembered the colorful fabric at the native market in Papeete. Nobody in Hawai'i had it. He had a buddy who worked on a cargo ship that stopped at Tahiti. Romig gave his friend $25 to buy fabric, seashell jewelry and tikis.

On his days off, he peddled the bolts of fabric at Waikiki shops. The $25 investment doubled and tripled. A Japanese seamstress in Kalihi said, "Have you ever thought about turning the fabric into aloha shirts? You'll make more money."

So Romig went to Sears and bought an aloha shirt pattern. The seamstress in Kalihi cranked out some aloha shirts. Ross Sutherland, owner of a top men's store, bought four dozen. To pay for the fabric, Romig had to borrow $200 from Yeager and $800 from the bank. By the time Romig paid it all back, he was $200 ahead.

Before long he had a dozen seamstresses at work in a tin shed in Kaka'ako. Then Romig got another bright idea. Why not give tour drivers a commission to bring their buses to the factory for a mu'umu'u tour? The mu'umu'u factory tours became an instant success. Better still, Romig sold the shirts direct to tourists and eliminated the middle man.

Eventually, he got out of the wholesale business and sold aloha shirts and mu'umu'us in his own shops. One of the shops he bought in Hilo had the rights to the brand name "Hilo Hattie." Romig discovered that the shop with the name of the famous comic hula dancer sold more mu'umu'us than his other shops.

The rest is history and now he can go to Tahiti whenever he wants to.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.