Student interviews yield wealth of local business anecdotes

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

•	Bob Sigall to sign books The author will sign copies of "The Companies We Keep/ Amazing Stories About 450 of Hawaii's Best Known Companies" at: Bestsellers Books & Music's Bishop Square store, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Jan. 16 and Jan. 23. Barnes and Noble Booksellers at Kahala Mall Shopping Center, 1 to 3 p.m., Jan. 24.

The Mountain Apple Co. got its name from the fruit that fell on founder Jon de Mello's roof on Tantalus. And Punahou School takes its place in Hawai'i history as the first island organization to incorporate.

They're among the hundreds of bits of trivia Bob Sigall culled in his new book, "The Companies We Keep/Amazing Stories About 450 of Hawaii's Best Known Companies" (Small Business Hawaii, paper, $19.95).

Perhaps the most interesting piece of trivia is the origin of Sigall's book.

It started as a class assignment he gave to his marketing students each semester at Hawai'i Pacific University, where Sigall, is a marketing instructor. He wanted his students to meet leaders of well-known Hawai'i companies face to face, and ask them a battery of questions about their businesses.

The idea was to push students off campus and give them a taste of the real world of business.

After a year of reading the students' reports, Sigall became fascinated by the details. A business consultant in Hawai'i for 25 years and a director of Small Business Hawai'i, he didn't know many of the stories behind company names, slogans and logos or the rich history of many businesses.

"My students had found so many interesting stories about companies I thought I knew well," Sigall said. "I didn't realize how many great stories we have in Hawai'i — how many amazing things that have been happening to our companies."

After 10 semesters had passed, 150 of Sigall's students had written reports on about 450 companies. It was more than enough material to write a book.

Each of the students is listed by semester in the back of "The Companies We Keep." Those whose research warranted longer sections on individual businesses, organizations and even products are credited at the end of each passage.

Student interviews sometimes called for asking questions from an eight-page list. The work could be intense, said Yvonne Mia Vance, who reported on the Cafe Sistina restaurant — but also valuable.

"It helped us see business from a different perspective," said Vance, who now works as an events coordinator for the Battleship Missouri Memorial. "It makes you realize that different businesses start for different reasons. As business students and marketing students, it was good to be out there to learn about what brought the company to where it is."

Sigall also learned a few lessons putting the book together.

He considered writing a how-to primer geared for business leaders, but that seemed too dry given the richness of the material.

"That was pretty much all pushed aside by all of the fun stuff I found," Sigall said. "I teach my students in marketing at HPU that the most important thing is to give people the 'wow,' the thing that makes them reach for their wallet. I didn't want to make this a textbook, a serious book. I wanted it to be more fun. I wanted it to wow people."

So Sigall geared "The Companies We Keep" for kama'aina lovers of Hawai'i trivia.

"How many people know that Bank of Hawaii was founded by a parade of gold coins in downtown Honolulu as a publicity stunt?" he said.

The 1896 story involves a bounced check for $54, a wheelbarrow full of gold coins and a parade that led to the founding of the Islands' second bank.

Sigall tells the story in rich detail. But based on the research of Salig Chada, he also writes it up in "The Companies We Keep" as one of the more interesting histories of one of Hawai'i's best-known companies.

It's just one anecdote in a collection that Sigall hopes makes people reach for their wallets.

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