 This is Rob Hack with another episode of Exporting from Hawaii. Today, I'm very pleased to have my friend Ashley Harding, he's co-founder and president of OO Hawaii. Welcome. Thank you very much for being here. Let's jump right in and tell us what is OO Hawaii all about? OO Hawaii is a high-end skincare line with a oral dietary supplement and then seven topical skincare product. And what does OO mean? OO is the products are named and themed after the Hawaiian OO bird, one of the original honey eater birds. So when you look at our facial scrub, you can see that it's bird seed. So everything is, again, named and themed after the OO bird. It's important, I think, to keep the okina in there, otherwise people are going to say, ooh, Hawaii. So have you had trouble with that from a marketing standpoint? A little bit, but it seems like it sets in rather quickly. Yeah, that's great. I love the name OO and then I see it used in the logo throughout the feather there, the stripe. It's more of a Japanese Sumi stroke that goes with kind of our Japanese, almost origami box and then watercolor printing on the box. That's great. You told me that these products were really designed, generally speaking for the Asia market. How did you come up with that conclusion that let's start a product line that's just dedicated towards Asia? Well, it needs to be kind of formulated for everybody then. Asia obviously has a different concept of beauty, but I believe skincare can be universally applied as long as the formulations really capture all skin types. So for example, everything is formulated for all skin types when we really deep dive into some of our spa protocols for the treatments, maybe Asian skin might use a little bit less of our brilliant feather beauty balm where they, for a moisturizer, maybe like the sore a little bit better. I see. Let's talk a bit about your wife, Holly. She's very involved in the business, a co-founder, but she has, to my mind, a very interesting background with nutrition and all of that background makes its way into these products. Can you discuss that a little bit? Absolutely. Because I think that that's a fantastic benefit. So my wife Holly and business partner now for 20 years is a holistic nutrition expert with several certifications and Holly really developed the theme and product platform in the line starting out with that dietary supplement. So we call it an integrative approach because it combines internal digestion and beauty that then translates to your skincare. So when you really take care of yourself with our dietary supplement, reducing inflammation, protein digestion, and blood flow, it's really going to help all these products work even better. That's absolutely true. I sense that in Asia, generally speaking, the diet is better than the standard Western American or Hawaii diet, and I think you can see that in the people and in their skin and the women's skin in particular. So I think you're on to something here. This is great. Let's talk about your background again. You've been doing beauty products for how long? I've been in the beauty business about 20 years where we started out selling more bath and body products and more soaps and lotions, you know, shampoos, those sorts of things. And then we also competed in some candle and gift categories as well. Even pet care products, so dog shampoos and so forth. And then Holly and I, we sold that company and exited in 2016, and they really wanted to compete in high-end luxury skincare, develop a totally natural product. And we still think that the Hawaii brand is underleveraged, so therefore there was space for a Hawaii-themed product in the high-end skincare market around the world. If you watch this show, and I assume you do, you'll hear me talk and complain too that our local companies do not build up the Hawaii brand enough or use the Hawaii brand enough that the state of Hawaii is out in the world doing marketing for our companies 24-7 in terms of blue skies, great beaches, clean water, what have you. And our companies need to utilize that to their advantage. And I think your company is doing that perfectly, especially using the natural components of what nature has to offer here. But taking it out and turning it into products that people can use on their skin, making them feel better, look better, feel healthy, et cetera. And I'm sure that has something to do with your marketing. Absolutely. 100%. That's the only way in beauty, probably one of the most competitive categories in the world, that we can actually compete with some of the largest companies and penetrate the market that way. It's that brand of Hawaii. Likewise, the market is so massive, where do you start? So we're really looking at appealing to those visitors who visit Hawaii, know the natural beauty, have that takeaway, then want to have some gift or some remembrance of Hawaii through the skincare products. That's a great idea. When a customer visits Hawaii, let's just assume that a Japanese visitor is coming here. Are you marketing to them before they get to Hawaii? Or are you just waiting until they get here and then they see your products in the store? How are you doing that? You know, some of both, either through social media, there's some outreach, so hopefully folks have eyes on it before. We've also been successful through some press releases, you know, getting mentions in the Mahanahou magazine and things of that nature. But with the Japanese customer, when they're here, for example, going through duty-free stores and Hawaii is there, it really takes an in-store support salesperson to really engage that customer to actually get that conversion. Right. Speaking of social media, what are you using as your primary social media, Instagram? Primary would be Instagram, that's correct. Any posts in Japanese or Korean or Chinese? No. So I think that's the next step, is to make a Japanese-specific Instagram page. Well, I think that's a great idea. Okay. Let's stay with the natural aspect of the products. Are any of the products formulated here in Hawaii or where is that being done? So some of the products are formulated here in terms of creating the deck and so forth, and they're manufacturing a split between Hawaii and California as our inventory is split between Hawaii and California. And at the end of the day, that's for the ease of servicing our customers. You know, shipping back and forth from Hawaii is rather challenging, but we do source a lot of our raw materials from Hawaii. So for example, the golden nectar, serum is fragranced and uses soundwood, oil, essential oil, which comes from the big island. Oh, really? Great. Are there any other products that are sourced locally? And is Hali involved in the formulation? Yes. So Hali is involved in kind of the design and formulation of the product, and then it gets its final stamp by our team of formulation chemists. And those are the folks in California? Correct. That's great. You said you've been working with that team for many, many years. Yes. Previous organizations, what have you. Wonderful. Okay. Let's talk a little bit more about your marketing strategy. These are premium products, meaning they're available in certain stores. They wouldn't be available in some other stores. So let's say, for example, now, where would somebody buy these products in Hawaii? So right here in Honolulu, maybe two premium retailers would be Duty Free Stores, both at the airport, and Key Galleria and Waikiki. And also you can go right into Neiman Marcus in Alamoana Mall and buy them there. And how about on neighbor islands, anywhere available? There are. I know that on Maui, we're in some of the spas. So Grand Wailea, the team is actually there today. Fairmont is coming on board, as well as Credo Beauty. That's great. And how about on the mainland? Is there any place that somebody could buy it watching the show now? Again, Neiman Marcus Stores. And then you can always go to neimanmarcus.com. You can go to qvc.com and, of course, our own website, oohawaii.com. Okay, great. We'll put that information up later in the show where people could find it. And then how about internationally? If somebody wanted to buy this in Japan, could they buy it locally? Soon. Soon. So again, this line was fashioned for Asian beauty markets. And right now we are exporting to Hong Kong and some crossover into mainland China and Macau. And we are about to open up the Japan market. The South Korea is in the works, as well as Russia, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, and hopefully even Malaysia. Really, that would be great. I could imagine these products would do really well in Malaysia. Southeast Asian women in general are very concerned about the look of their faith, the healthy appearance going out in public and looking very healthy and radiant and bright. And I could imagine that these products would do really well there. There's a very big rush in the Asian market right now for natural products, not just skincare with food and others. I could see this doing extremely well in those markets where organic is a big word, non-GMO. And I assume that these products are aimed, targeted towards that type of consumer. Correct. So we have all of our organic and non-GMO certifications. And you're absolutely correct with those consumer trends across Asia, whether it's even apparel, food, and then, of course, in the beauty category. It seems to be that the last 10, 15, 20 years, the Western United States is kind of setting these natural trends. And Asia has been a little slow to take on those trends. But wow, now, right now, there's a huge need. And the consumer awareness is unbelievable, where now we have folks who never before are now deep-diving the ingredient deck. And they want to know more or less what's not in the product, but what is not in the product. They want to ensure all those hair bins, the GMOs are out, the synthetic fragrances are out, the colorants are out, all the things you don't want in a natural skincare line. How about the three chemicals, forgive me because I don't remember the name off the top of my head, but they're now banned in Hawaii sunscreens. I assume you don't have any of those. No. We don't really compete in a sunscreen or SPF category. A couple of our products, these two would have a low-level natural sun protectant. But in terms of skincare, we wouldn't have any SPF product in there. OK, great. Let's take a quick break. We'll be back with Ashley Harding of Oahu, Hawaii. And we'll talk more specifics about exporting of the product. We'll be right back. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii and all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Aloha. This is Scott Perry. And I'm the host of Let's Talk Hawaii at Think Tech Hawaii. In this show, we're going to be speaking in English and Japanese. And I'm going to use my 30 years of experience to help many Japanese viewers improve their English skills as well as learning many interesting things about Hawaii. You can catch my show every other Tuesday, 3 p.m. Hawaii time. See you then. Aloha again. This is Rob Hack with Exporting from Hawaii. And we're here with Ashley Harding, co-founder and president of Oahu, Hawaii, a premium beauty supply manufacturer here on Oahu. During a break, we were talking very quickly about this product that I think is really interesting. Can you tell us about this? Sure. This is our gua sha tool. So this is a rose quartz tool that's meant to massage the face and stimulate blood flow in the face that would naturally build collagen. So most of these products have sapphire crystals or rose quartz crystals in them in the powder form, which then would also help stimulate blood flow in the face. I'll give you a little demo. I like it with the brilliant feather beauty balm. You would use it on your neck. You always want to go up. You can use it on the jawline here, use it on the face, around the eye, and then even on the forehead. So when we do work with our spas and we have our signature Hawaiian crystal facial, this is part of that treatment. Really interesting. Now, we've talked mostly about women, but men could certainly use these products. Absolutely. Are there any formulations that you could imagine men using more than another formulation? You know, no. I'd like to try this gouache after shaving myself. Yeah, absolutely. I like the brilliant feather beauty balm. That one works for myself. I have typically dry skin and I like the serum as well. Some people like to buy a scrub and a cleanser. Some people like to buy the serum and a moisturizer. And of course, a lot of people like to buy the whole line. So if you go to DFS or Neiman Marcus, do they carry the whole line? Yes. And if you go there, you can even request a free facial of the product. Oh, that's interesting. I'll go check that out after the show. Let's talk about exporting. This show is called Exporting from Hawaii. And I know you have a significant experience from a past life and currently with Ohio with exporting. So what I find fascinating is that you design this product line largely for the Asian market as we've already covered. You will sell it here locally, but you will export it and are currently exporting to some Asian market. When you are exporting, what have you found to be the most useful strategy for finding agents and distributors in these new markets that you're attacking? Because companies will contact you and say, I'd really like to go to the XYZ market, but I can't find an agent or a distributor that I can trust. But obviously you've had success at doing this over the years. How do you do that? What's your recipe? Good question. I believe anyone, first of all, who's looking to export really needs to have some domestic sales under their belt. Everywhere we go, they want to know what our success is in the states, even if it's only four, six or eight months. And then of course, the trade show circuit has been invaluable. With us, of course, we like to do cosmetic specific trade shows. Can you tell me what some of those are? Sure. It might be Indie Beauty Market. It might be Cosmoprof. Where are those? Indie Beauty Market has one in Los Angeles and New York City. And then Cosmoprof has, I think, four or five a year. Paris, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, and then one traveling show. At those shows, obviously there would be a lot of international buyers and people coming. It wouldn't just necessarily be Las Vegas centric or New York centric. No. So our Hong Kong distributor, we found at the Las Vegas Cosmoprof. So the trade shows, absolutely. Are there any trade shows in Asia? Is there one in Japan, for example? There are. There's a couple of cosmetic specific trade shows. Of course, we ride the slippery slope of being a Hawaii product. But we need to also position ourselves as a high-end beauty skincare line, too. Right. That makes sense. When you're working in Asia, let's say Japan, for example, have you utilized any of the Hawaii government programs like through DBET, through the High Step program, or any of those activities? Yes. We did submit an export plan and we were lucky to get one of the grants through the company assistance. And then through that grant, we are partially financing our attendance this year to the Cosmoprof Las Vegas trade show. As well as through the U.S. commercial service, we did some international company profiles to kind of validate and double-check Hong Kong and China potential distributors. That's great. A lot of companies will contact me and say, we need help getting our product into Japan, for example. We do not understand the testing procedures. Everything's in Japanese. What do we need to do? Do you have any advice for people on that? Sure. It's tricky when you look at the regulatory compliance. And typically, the EU kind of has their regulatory compliance. Then maybe Canada with their dual language has their regulatory compliance. And then we look at Asia as having their own kind of bundle of regulatory compliance with Japan being the trickiest one there. I think it goes back to that agent. And for us, in beauty, it's perhaps a little complicated because you must have an agent as well as a cosmetic licensee. So finding that where you can have one-stop shop, that's made the process a lot easier. And who do you use? Who's your one-stop shop right now? We have an agent and a laboratory kind of combined. They also distribute and also have some retail. So if you find customers that have enough internal distribution or they have enough of their own retail stores, they typically have some sort of export, import, office and function within their own organization. And they will handle the labeling, say for the Japanese market? Correct. You don't do that here? No. And I don't think we want to precisely because when we have this product, and it's on the shelf in Japan, and it has the fancy foil Japanese cover-up label, it looks like it's an import product because it is because it has that label. And that's more attractive to the buyer because they know it's a US-made product and it's not our brand produced in Japan. That's great. I would imagine having an all-natural product from Hawaii, not just the US, but particularly from Hawaii, in the Japanese market, in the right position at certain stores, that this product could almost sell itself once it's there. Well, we hope so. Japan is a tricky market where anyone who is going to bring you into Japan, and I think this is the same for multiple categories, Rob, is they're going to bring you in very, very gingerly and just give you a tiny bit of distribution, maybe only a couple stores and really test the market where other distributors would give you a broader piece right away. So for people looking at Japan, don't be discouraged with a foot in the door. My experience over these 30 years also tells me that getting the story of the company, your story, probably more so Holly and the nutrition and getting that story somehow into the product and let the customer understand that has been very important for smaller companies trying to build their brand. And have you found that at all, that building into OO's marketing, especially in Japan, getting your story into that, has that been helpful for you? It's unbelievable. It's, again, not just this category, but small companies that are owner-occupied that can deliver and have a great story, I believe are just as competitive as, you know, larger manufacturers and distributors. It's super powerful. Great. I'm glad to hear that. And again, when I look at the packaging and I see everything says made in Hawaii with a lo-ha, made with a lo-ha in the USA, it's wonderful. Our companies need to do much more of that. How about packaging itself? Have you had to design anything, particularly for the Japanese market? I think if you can have good packaging in Japan, that packaging will work everywhere else. They're so strict about the way they like their... I mean, the packaging has to look good. It has to be appealing. It needs to be sexy. It has to have, you know, the foil gold stamp. It needs to have the soft-touch varnish. We like the white opal glass over traditional PET and so forth. But you're right. It has to look good. In terms of modifications on the packaging, eventually we would need to repackage with dual language for certain markets and also add an in-search for certain EU markets. A big part of selling, exporting in Asia, a big part of exporting from Hawaii is shipping. It's no secret. One of the reasons a product like yours can do well in a foreign market is it's a premium product. Premium means it's going to be a little bit more expensive. But because it's more expensive, the customer understands that as a premium product and the places that you're selling the product. People understand they're going to pay more. As soon as they walk in the door, they're going to pay a little bit more for this product. But how are you handling shipping? Where does it come from? Do you ship in large quantities, smaller quantities? Do you ship by air? Do you ship by ocean? How does that work? And I suppose for some cosmetic lines, you have to be careful about temperature and these types of things. Yes. So 99% of our shipments all go air. They're all smaller. LCL, pallets, or even just multiple cartons. We ship some from Hawaii. We ship some from mainland USA. And the thing about Hawaii that's really interesting is a lot of even larger distributors aren't familiar with shipping from Hawaii. And they're a little spooked and scared. They think it's difficult. It's going to be too expensive and they kind of write you off. So as a manufacturer and a brand owner, my advice is we need to already know the answers. We need to be that helpful for these distributors. Sometimes if you want the deal to go through, you need to offer maybe a CIF price instead of X works. And kind of deliver the first one to make it easy for them. Shipping from here, a premium product, I really think you can absorb it. Like let's say the street price, I'm completely making this up. Let's say the street price for this is $100 in Japan. And it might cost five or six or $7 to actually ship. That's a fairly substantial jar, right? What? Let's say of $100, five of that is the actual shipping cost. Kind of irrelevant in my opinion. It's not a huge percentage. Whereas if you're shipping something, this costs $20 in Japan and $5 is that you're looking at. So you're right. We have the advantage of being kind of in that luxury category. But even if we ship it for the customer and then invoice them the shipping, they're just grateful that we organized the shipping because maybe they don't have an agent here that they're familiar with. Absolutely. It's a new market and you just have to be ready to be hands-on helpful with shipping from Hawaii. And who are you? Do you have a preferred shipping vendor? No, it depends on the customer. We use everyone, even from some of the carriers like FedEx and UPS to DHL to some of the local companies. So NALA and others. Okay, that's great. Well, one quick point before we wrap up is when you're talking about marketing particularly in foreign markets, how much do you have to rely on your agent or the distributor to do the marketing? And then, do they require, or does the market require you or Holly, somebody from the company to be there and actually be the face of the company telling the story? That's a really, really good question, Rob. A really good point because if you're exporting to a market even if you have an agent or a distributor there, that distributor is inevitably going to ask you what's your marketing plan? You don't want to come back for the answer because I don't have one for Japan. I thought you were the marketing player. Right? You think that you just give it to them and they sell it and it just magically happens. No. Your agent has to work with you to develop a plan that you can present to your distributor and then you guys can execute it together. I see. Okay, great. Now, if we could, let's bring up the image of where to contact Ashley, Holly, and OO, Hawaii team. Your website, very clear. Email, info at OO, Hawaii. Instagram, please start following at OO, Hawaii. Here's a local telephone number. And then if you would like to, again, review with our audience where could they go buy this product right now besides OO, Hawaii? Where could they go test it and see it? DFS. Absolutely. Here in Honolulu, go down to Alamoana Mall and visit us there at Neiman Marcus and at the DFS Tea Galleria. We're on the second floor at the local beauty counter and visit the beauty concierge for your complimentary OO, Hawaii facial. Great. I strongly recommend everybody get out, test these products, wonderful products, wonderful company, great people made in Hawaii with Aloha. We love it. They're exporting out to the world. So thank you again for being here. I really appreciate it. And mahalo for watching, exporting from Hawaii. We will see you again in two weeks.