 I'm Mellie James, host of Let's Mana Up. This show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they're growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. My guests today are Keikoa Kazemaro and Andrea Stickle, co-founders of Ambassador's with Aloha, based here on Oahu. Welcome to the show, guys. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. So why don't we have you start off by sharing your story. How did you get started? I was with Aloha. We're co-founders. My fiancee, Andrea Stickle. Where do we start? It's a long story. So I kind of was here for the whole thing, so I can kind of speak for you, I guess. You've been a professional surfer. All your life, you rode for big companies like Hurley and Oakley. Ambassadors with Aloha started, I mean, it's been a passion of mine my entire life. I rode for numerous companies and I did collaboration pieces with them and it's finally my chance to sort of kind of put my vision of life and connect with my fans on a deeper level. I love the story about that you were testing all the board shorts and all these little kind of features or like the shorts catching your knee or something and you're like, okay, the shirt has to be shorter. Yeah, it's sort of like I'm a professional surfer and I live in board shorts every day. So for me, if I'm going to be putting out a product, I want to make sure that it's the best product possible with what I'm able to work with, the capital I was able to work with. And for me, my board shirt manufacturers, I was a pain in their butt. They were like, you are changing it every single week and I'm like, yeah, because I want to make sure that the board shirts I put out are the best product possible. I'm a surfer, so I live that life. So I literally surfed in them for about a year before I even put out anything. So I tested it, whether it was a 10 foot pipe, it was training on the mats, we were training at tactical strength. So for me, it's important when we put out product that I tested, she tests all the women's active wear that we're going to be putting out. So for me growing up, being with global brands, we've always put on these clothes and tested all these board shorts and done all this stuff. So that was always, for me, the pinnacle of my career was doing a custom board shorts with Hurley internationals of them for 15 years and just going deeper into my story. It's like that was, for me, the biggest payoff of what I was doing because since I've been a kid, I love dressing up. You know that. I dress up wherever I go. I'm the kid that always had his clothes laid out on the bed the next day for school. So it's been a passion of mine and for me to be able to connect with my audience, my fans and my following, it's always been something that was going to happen. And I'm at a point in my life, finally, where I'm able to do that and I absolutely love what I do. I think that's really important for entrepreneurs or anyone that's starting their own businesses. You've got to make sure that it's something you love to do and you enjoy doing. Yeah. So I mean, you've got this deep love for Hawaii, deep love for surfing and deep love for fashion. Yeah, big time. And so it's kind of all culminating together, which is awesome. And I love seeing a local surf brand because it just feels that so many of the surf brands out there are all like not from here, even though surfing was invented here. So it's so nice to see that really kind of coming back. Can you talk a little bit about the message of what Ambassador Zuloha is and like the message behind the prints? Ambassador Zuloha is, we want people to feel connected to this. You know, there's a lot of brands I feel that are from Hawaii and a lot of brands are very, I don't want to say anything negative, but you want people to feel connected to your brand and a part of it. You know what I mean? We didn't never want to feel aggressive or we never wanted to exclude anyone that's not here from Hawaii. That's something that we really wanted to share was we wanted to share the Aloha spirit. We wanted to share our culture and at the same time our graphics. I mean, if you look at any of our graphics, whether it's our board shorts, our long sleeve tees, our hats, our graphics are very culturally tied to Hawaii and that's an opportunity for us to share our culture as well as keeping a modern aesthetic and a contemporary pattern, like you're talking about the board shorts being above the knee and just being board shorts that I surf in every day. I train in every day. So the quality is there, but at the same time, there's an aesthetic to it that brings everything back here to Hawaii, which I feel is really important because being in the Manila program has been amazing because it sort of taught us the importance of having our roots here in Hawaii while we scale and while we become that global brand and I completely plan to take this global. I have so many goals and we have so many opportunities coming up and I'm really excited and I'm really excited to just share our culture and our Aloha throughout the world, whether that's in Japan, Brazil, we have people reaching out all the time. They're like, we love the Aloha spirit. We love what you guys are doing and for me, that's rewarding. That's what I sit out to do and what I was always passionate about growing up surfing is connecting with my fans or people that we're doing designs with or bringing just our culture and just spreading it. Awesome. Yeah. Well, let's take a look at some of the imagery with some of the fashion and I'd love for you to kind of share what some of the patterns kind of mean to you and mean to the people wearing them. So what's this one? Yeah. So this one is a death grip long sleep tee. So this is a very comfortable long sleeve and we have, if you notice the sleeves, there's a high biscuit print down the sleeves with our logo. And on the back, it says ambassadors with Aloha and Hawaii below that. And it's sort of a, you know, it has like a little bit of a guns and roses vibe. And, you know, it has that, it has that like modern sort of, you know, you know, hip fit where, you know, the younger generations and that demographic can wear that because, you know, I pay attention to everything, you know, I pay attention to what the younger generations are wearing, you know, what, what, you know, the athletes are wearing, you know, even we got the uncles wearing our board shirts and sandies and stuff. So it's for everybody. It's not just for, you know, a certain targeted audience. I want everyone to feel involved in this. And, you know, it's funny because we have young kids that love that graphic. They're like, oh, my gosh, we love the sleeve hits and we love that. And then we also have, you know, an older demographic that are like, oh, my gosh, it has like a guns and roses vibe. So it's cool to see like people's perspective on a graphic when you, you know, bring it to life and sort of, you know, just flow. And, you know, my graphic designer, he's so talented and, you know, that's something I've been talking about recently is I don't ever tell him like, this is what you have to do. This is, this is the motivation. Here's the inspiration. We all stand our lane. We do what we do and that's how the best work comes out. So it does feel like it's surfwear, but it's kind of like streetwear or kind of can you talk a little bit about how you've melded those two things? I really haven't seen something like that before. And it's it's also really nice to see how so many different types of people do feel that they can wear this because it really is like that ambassador with Aloha that it's so accepting and open. But it's I find that it's amazing how you've been able to kind of interweave all these different thematics into your designs. Can you talk a little bit more about kind of the streetwear meets surfwear? Yeah. Holy, that's that's actually where my passion is that I follow. I follow brands. I mean, going deeper into, you know, sort of what my inspiration has been. I follow, you know, brands like Fear of God, Mike Amiri, John Elliott, and these are all like L.A. street brands where they do their their L.A. You know, fashion designers and they do all of their cut and sew in L.A. And it's inspiring because they do it from L.A. And it's like that was that makes me think like I can do this from Hawaii. Like I want to make sure this is always going to be something that, you know, is based based here in Hawaii. And, you know, for me, I love streetwear. I've always worn stuff from companies such as like Illist, hundreds, diamonds and stuff growing up. And, you know, I think being here in Hawaii, there's these surf brands and it was just sort of cool to mesh everything and, you know, to bring that street vibe and then bring the surfwear. And it's like it just you can sort of see in it, see it sort of like bringing all these little, you know, demographics together, you know, like the Fairfax crew or whether it's just guys at the beach that want to rock the board short. So I think it's really allowed us to, you know, reach different audiences and connect with different people. And then we have some collaborations coming up to where that's really going to come into play with a natural street brand that I've I've looked up to since I was a kid and I used to buy their stuff. So that's coming up soon. And, you know, yeah, not I can't say it yet. I can't say it's let me see what can I say about this? OK, I can say this. It's going to be our illest drop yet. All right. That was a good one, right? Yeah, yeah. So I don't want to give away too much, but I'm really excited about this one. We actually just completed the collection. So it's cool, too, because we got to incorporate the surf and the the Hawaii. We have board shorts in this drop and the street brand has never dropped board shorts. So they I gave them a sample of our stuff. They saw the fit, the pattern. You're like, this is amazing. We love it. And I'm like, let's bring board shorts to this entire collection. Maybe we can do the sweatshorts, sweatpants, the bomber jackets. And it just the whole collection is so cool. It's a it's a it's a perfect mixture of sort of what you're saying of street and surf. And there's also, you know, the it's it has an athletic feel as well. So I mean, you can train in these, do yoga in these. So you have a you sponsor a couple athletes, right? Yes, we were working with Yancy Medeiros. He's one of my he's like my brother. We've been supporting each other for the longest time ever. So he fights in the UFC. So we were doing a lot of his custom shirts for his fights. We were working with Lee Malamick Farling as well. She's a current Bellatora Women's Champion of the World. So we were creating a lot of her custom gear. So that's sort of, you know, our plan as well is we're just we want to, you know, for me being an athlete and being on this side of the fence now, it's like I have that perspective of, you know, what it took for me to, you know, feel that support, you know, it's having that support and having that, you know, people behind you gives you so much confidence when you're competing. And I know that because there would be times where I was with companies that I didn't feel the support. And I was like, Oh, am I surfing good enough? Or am I getting the results? Or it makes you think and it makes you kind of doubt yourself, even though you're confident in your craft or whatever you do. And, you know, for me to know that and be on that side is like, I put so much support behind our athletes or whoever we're going to work with in the future. I want them to know that, Hey, listen, I'm behind you 200%. I want your graphic to be a complete like representation of your heart, of what you're feeling, color ways, you know, what the graphic stands for, whether that's a foundation that you have or a belief you have and stuff like that. So when we work with athletes in the future, it's there's going to be a lot of collaborations and hands-on designs with them. Because for me, that was so cool. That was like one of the coolest parts about being sponsored is like, what? Are you going to make my own board shirt? Are I going to make my own shirt? Like you feel very a part of the brand when you do that. And that's important for me to do that and carry that over because it just it makes you feel supported and that's when you perform best. You obviously you've had an amazing surf career. How do you feel that that's really helped you be a better entrepreneur? What do you feel like from what kind of doors have been opened? And I know you've had so many great collaborations. You've got Nicolab Ultra, yeah, vlog and all that. I mean, it's just I'm so amazed with how many opportunities and collaborations that the company's had in such a short amount of time. But how do you feel like as a professional surfer and you're still a professional surfer, how that's really helped drive you as an entrepreneur? It's I feel I'm extremely grateful. You know, like I say this all the time, I'm very repetitive with this. Surfing has given me the platform to do what I do. It's given me, you know, my fans and people that have been following my journey. And, you know, I've connected with so many people in the industry. And, you know, it's funny, like I drop my line and there's people from those brands that I'm not going to mention who they might get in trouble that were, you know, graphic designers of people I worked with that brand. And they bought like big boxes of my gear and they're like, love it. Keep doing it. And like kind of it was like, oh, shush, I'm not saying anything. You're buying it. So but just, you know, being a professional surfer and competing, it's, you know, it's just it goes. It's very parallel with what I'm doing, though. I want to make sure everything in my life that I'm doing always kind of goes hand in hand side by side. Competing, you know, we have my videographer. He's actually here right now. Reeve Shaw Productions. He's in the building. He's got his red camera filming right now. So it's, you know, it's Michael LaVolta has been incredible. You know, they've they've sort of have seen, you know, what you brought up is that not only do I want to be an athlete and, you know, perform at a high level, but I also want to be an entrepreneur and I want to, you know, take my business to the next level. And I think that that that element is really important. And I encourage that. And I'm happy I've been able to inspire some guys that I even I surf with to start their own brands and whatnot, because we have this platform and we have this window, you know, of competing of like, OK, you're going to compete and you put all your eggs in one basket. But it's like, after that, what is your plans? You know what I mean? And I've always had that mentality. And I always knew I'd start my own brand. It was just a matter of when and it was just perfect timing when I did it. Well, we'd love to we're going to take a break right now and hear more about the ups and downs of starting your own business. And also hear from your beautiful fiance, Andrea, as well. Thanks, everybody, for taking a break. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years. And we're fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championship. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving and sustaining success and finding greatness. If you're a student, parent, sports or business person, and want to improve your life and the lives of people around you, tune in and join me on Mondays at 11 a.m. as we go beyond the lines on Think Kauai. Aloha. Hi, guys, I'm your host, Lillian Cumick, from Lillian's Vegan World. And I come to you live every second Friday from 3 p.m. And this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health regarding your health and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier and have fun at the same time. So do join me. I look forward to seeing you and Aloha. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Mellie James with Let's Mata Up. We have Keikoa Kazumero and Andreas Stickle here with Ambassadors with Aloha. Welcome back, guys. Thank you. So I think we'll jump into some images so our audience here can see all the awesome fashion that we're talking about. Sounds good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right, what's what's going on here? So here we have the Making Waves board shorts. It's a black mint fade. And this is sort of what we're talking about earlier. It's got a very, you know, contemporary fit. It's above the knee mobility, side seam zippers, completely velcro this. So I live in board shorts. And, you know, for me, that was one of the most important items in the whole line. Wait, let's let's talk about this. What are the key features that you changed having having worn these shorts like a year knowing like what the heck you hated with all your shorts used to wear? Yeah. So I'm very, very particular about my board shorts. She knows this. I am very hard on it. So I velcro gives surfers rash, whether if you're in the water for over an hour, you start to get rash. If your board shirts are below your knee, you stand up, it'll grab your knee and you'll just flip over the handlebars. So even training jiu-jitsu guys will complain about the shorts grabbing their knees. And then the key to the the the key pocket, the side seam zipper. The reason for that is because if you have a velcro pocket in the back, you normally put your car key, everyone surfs. They go take their truck to the beach or Tacomas, whatever, take the key out. And then they put their key in their pocket. If it's if it's on the back on your on your your butt cheek, then you can actually feel the key poking in and it hurts. And like you actually like people bruise from that. And if not even that is like if you fall or you like sit back down on your board, the key sometimes can be placed up and just like poking your leg. So yeah, so the side seam zipper allows you to have it sort of on your thigh and it doesn't get in the way. You're not sitting on it. It doesn't create any pressure things in your surfboards. So there's a lot of details about board shirts people don't really know about. And I live in board shirts. I would wear board shirts right now if I could not worry about it every day. Yeah, board shirts are an everyday thing for me. So I want to make sure that those were were designed correctly. And you know, with my manufacturing partners, you know, I just. Locked in a manufacturing partner where we're going to have access to like some insane materials to so we're just all we're going to do is just elevate, you know, the material with antimicrobial. There's like steel skin properties that we want to do in some of our shorts. There's there's so much stuff. There's actually like one that the board shirt will sort of react as like a coolant. Like if you overheat, they'll kind of take your body temperature down. So there's so much property. Yeah, there's there's a lot of stuff out there that I want to want to test out. So we're going to get better. Are you going to have that for girls, too? Absolutely. We actually really overheat as much, right? I don't know. I'm not sweating. You guys are keeping it all cool and collected. Yeah, but we do have a women's line coming out. So a lot of our items right now are unisex, but they're mostly tailored to men. But she's wearing. I mean, I am wearing. Yeah, that's that's actually an entity. She's wearing an extra spot. Well, yeah, she makes it look really good. Yeah, she makes it look really good. Yes, but we do have a bunch of women items coming out. And yoga apparel coming out. So I've grown up doing yoga, gymnastics, dance, cheer, all that. So I've been testing them. I let out a little sneak peek of them on my Instagram. People went crazy. Insane. What's your Instagram? Andrea, underscore, there's my name. Checker. What's your Instagram? Hey, Kola underscore as a marrow. I almost forgot my own Instagram. What's the company's Instagram? Ambassadors with Aloha. OK, cool. Yeah. So you just type that in and you'll find it. Let's take a look at some more images. Awesome. All right. I think they'll have some some lady, lady stuff in there. OK, so here's actually another image of the I just for some reason, I just love this image. It's it's, you know, one of the models we had work with us walking and he's out in Palm Springs during Coachella. And it just has such a cool vibe. You can sort of see how there's these, you know, younger generations wearing these long sleeves with these cool graphics down the sleeve. And it just has that just completely embodies kind of what we're trying to do and, you know, with connecting with the younger generations has like that very hip sort of, you know, just Hawaiian aesthetic. And it's just something completely different. I feel like the market really needs and I feel like we're going to be the ones to fill that gap. I like it. Going global. Yeah, let's do it. All right, we have a couple more images. Oh, here's some girl stuff. OK, so this right here is our mint represent hoodie. This right here is actually our best selling item. We call this or we have a couple of nicknames for this, the golden ticket or the omelu. Every time we have a pop of shop or we did something with Bloomingdale's people immediately just come running to this, this hoodie, because it has this like really just cool mint and a teal color. It was like cool and fresh. Yeah. And then the graphics on the sleeves, there's all of these little stamps with the aloha state, a pair of never dies. And then across the chest is the aloha. And then you can see down at the bottom, we have the logo. And there's all of these little little graphics that are completely custom to our brand that we did. And just a detail has a really cool feel. And yeah, the girls love that hoodie. The guys love it. It's also cool because all of our colors, they all tie in together. So you could wear the hoodie. Yeah, so the. He's wearing the hat. So this right here is the exact color of that hoodie. So you kind of wear it as a set. So if you wear this, you wear the more in the black performer tee, you wear it with the island chain, mint hat. And you kind of wear it with the hoodie with the making waves board shorts. It's a whole set. So the moral is we just need to only have ambassadors that will always match. OK, let's show the video real quick. Mm hmm. Yeah, like I was saying earlier, it just has a very, you know, cool, cool feel. And we want everyone to feel a part of this, you know, whether they're, you know, and it's insane. Most of our sales are all coming from the mainland, too. We have a ton here, but we have a lot of people from. Alley that are and they're always they tag us on Instagram and they're like how to represent the aloha up here in New Jersey or stuff like that. And that's exactly what we wanted to do. Yeah. And I think it's important that we have companies that are here. And that's obviously something I'm on up. It's very passionate about that we get to take back that narrative of the way the world learns about Hawaii, the way the world shares about Hawaii and aloha. So I think it's really wonderful that your messages are getting out there to the mainland, to the globe, and it's really coming from right here. And it feels very authentic and that connection to culture here. That's the rule. So let's talk a little bit about being an entrepreneur in Hawaii. I know you want to keep it here and grow this brand from Hawaii out to the world. What have been some of the challenges on building your business here? Oh man. So if you know me at full transparency as a thing with me, I like to be very, very open because I want to share my story and I want others to feel encouraged. And I feel like it's just like, oh, it's all perfect and everything is awesome. It's hard. There's days where I'm sitting there looking at her and I'm like, what am I doing? Like what is going on? And then there's days where all of those days where you're sitting there, what am I doing completely makes sense and something happens and you get a retailer or you get an opportunity and thankfully for us, it's just the hard part for us was making sure our back end and everything was built correctly in order to scale. And I'm going to brag a little bit about you right now. Melly and Manna Up have been amazing. I remember looking over at Andrea and asking her, I'm like, there's something I need to do. I don't know if I'm going to compete full time, run my business and maybe take a course, a business course or something where I really want to educate myself and get to that next level. And Manna Up, it was so perfect. It was literally like God sent because it was exactly what I needed to figure out, okay, here's a plan and let's implement what we got to do in order to get there. And it's been so strategic. Everything that we need to learn whether it's merchandising, shipping, talking to these other brands that are global, $500 million brands coming in and sort of saying where they started, how they grew. Stuff like that has been such a huge help because that for me was a struggle was sort of figuring out, okay, what's the next step? I have this inventory, what do I do with it? What do we do with the next drop? Where do we want it placed? And being in Manna Up has just been so helpful and it's guiding us in the right direction. And for us, our strong point is working, doing the photo shoots, the social media, the videos, the YouTube series, Andrea model school time, she has all of her friends that model our gear. So we have that part unlocked. That's the fun part for us. The fun part is also the business but that was the struggle for us. It's sort of figuring out, okay, what do we really have to do to get to that next level in scale? And Manna Up has been so instrumental in that. So we're super thankful. We're excited to have you. We love execution, you guys are great executors. Trying. Our favorite type of entrepreneur. Awesome. Well, actually, speaking of Andrea modeling, let's get to that last image so we don't make sure we don't miss her on there. There she is. Yes, so that's our windbreaker. So it actually is a UNIXX item as well. It's perfect for Hawaii weather because it does get a little chilly but it's not too hot. Perfect. What's coming up next for you guys? I know there's Bloomingdale's. There's a couple other big things. What's coming up next for the company? Well, we just wrapped up a lot of the exciting stuff. We were just actually featured in the most recent Fast and Furious Hobbes and Shaw with the rock, yeah. Where? When? That just released in August. So we had a lot of our gear so actually the scene, you guys can go check it out, the scene where the rock goes back to Samoa to go visit his entire family. All of him and his brothers are wearing all of our gear. We got a call from Universal Pictures. I thought someone was messing with me. I was like, oh, okay. And they're like, we need everything you have in 2X. And I was like, done. So they took all of our stuff. They cut the sleeves off. They kind of, the costume director, weathered it, did what they had to do because they were at the, I don't want to spoil the movie if anyone didn't see it yet, but go check it out. You'll see our stuff everywhere. So that was exciting. Our last six screen shot. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, we have some really cool stuff coming up. We got the November 14 showcase coming up at DFS. We are actually going to be releasing a collaboration at that event that is going to be absolutely insane. We've been working on this collection for the last four months. Yep. We're going to have board shorts. It's with a really well-known street brand that's based in LA and the Bay Area. And this is actually a brand I looked up to growing up as a kid and I actually bought a bunch of their stuff when I was younger. So when I got the message from the owner, I was like, oh, someone's messing with me again. But you know, we created a plan. They wanted to be very, have that very Aloha Hawaii vibe, which I think we accomplished really well. But it also has that very kind of like LA street vibe. So we're going to do a, we're going to actually release that collection November 14th at the showcase. So stay tuned. All right. Yeah. I like it. So yeah. The Mono Up cohort four showcase at DFS. So be sure to follow Mono Up as well to be let known when that event happens. At Mono Up on Instagram. So we just have a couple more minutes left. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about or otherwise, you know, want to definitely hear from you guys around how our local community can continue to support, you know, you as entrepreneurs and also the brand? Something that's really important for us that I want to share is like, you know, for me, I always want to be really, you know, hands on with our Kiki. And you know, and the more that, you know, ambassadors with the Loha girls, the more outreach I can have with the kids, you know, I just, I just went to Naliko after school program last week and I talked to about a hundred kids at a Hina Elementary School. And it was so cool because we have these, we printed out these little papers of these T-shirts. And what I had them do is I had them, I say, hey, listen, I kind of explain, you know, who I was, you know, surfer and, you know, starting ambassadors with the Loha. And I had them draw their own graphics on the T-shirt with me. I sat there with them. I cannot draw to save my life. They were talented. Yeah, they were, yes. Yeah, so what we're going to do actually, I think is we might take one of the graphics from that and create a shirt and go surprise them and take them shirts. I love it. Because we really just want to inspire, you know, the Kiki and the future generations coming up, you know, I go over there and I make sure I'm very clear to them that, you know, I tell them, you know, chase after anything that you want to do in life and, you know, always make sure that, you know, you stay focused in school and I always encourage them to be respectful to their teachers, to their parents and stuff because they have, yes, they have their best interests, you know, at heart. Well, I think that's an awesome message. And I love that ambassadors the Loha are kind of multi, kind of coming into the community and love that our community can continue to support you from right here in Hawaii, growing globally. I want to thank you both for being on the show. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, it's awesome. And all this awesome stuff here, the lids and all that. We've got the gear right here. We've got the gear right here. Thanks everybody. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you.