 Aloha, this is Rob Hack with another episode of Exporting from Hawaii today. I'm very fortunate to have my friend Erin Uehara. She is the president of Chocolera here in Honolulu in Manoa Valley. Welcome, Erin, thank you very much for being here. Thank you, Rob. This is wonderful to have you here. As you can see, Erin makes chocolate, and some of the best chocolate you can find will go through the different products in a little while. The reason Erin's here today is because they've had some recent successes in exporting, particularly to Japan, and so we'd like to talk about that. But for now, let's just talk about the history of the company. So how old is Chocolera? It was established in 2010, and we opened our doors, our shop in Manoa in 2014, so we celebrate five years as a store this year. How many square feet is the store in so far? The store is only about 300 square feet. It's pretty small. But you make the chocolate there, everything's made in Manoa. Everything's made in that building. That's fantastic. And how many employees do you have there? We have seven full-time employees, and about eight part-time employees. Wow. We have some seasonal, too. And some of them speak Japanese, correct, for the tourist market that's coming in? A few. We're trying, the rest of us are trying to learn a little bit more Japanese. Oh, that's great. But do you find you have tourists coming in from the mainland or Europe or other places getting into Manoa? Yeah, actually, a lot of third of our business comes from visitors from Japan, and recently we've been seeing a lot more visitors from the mainland, a lot of Hawaii people, I guess, telling their family and friends on the mainland, and now they're making the trips out here, too. Can the chocolate be purchased somewhere else than the store, or can you only buy it at the store? Most of our products you can only buy at our store. There are a few select products that we have for sale in other locations, and sometimes it's under their own packaging. So we sell it like the Moana Surfrider Hotel in their private label packaging. Sometimes it's in different areas for amenities and things, but not so much as a storefront anywhere else. Okay, great. Let's go back to the history of chocolate. You started in 2010, coming up on five years, when did you actually start exporting? Exporting was actually two years ago. We started our first trade show about four years ago, so we started up just by going to the shows and getting exposure and learning about the market in Japan, but not actually having our first order until about a year and a half ago, and then this year now we have more orders to different locations, so that's exciting. Great. It's growing. That's great. So choco lea means what? Choco is French for chocolate, and then lea means pleasure or joy in Hawaiian, so it's a fusion of French and Hawaiian, which is a play on also our family recipe of European and Hawaiian chocolate. That's really interesting. So you said your uncle came up with the name? Yeah, my uncle, Uncle Collins, Kauai. That's great. And the logo, too? The logo, too. He worked with a friend. Her name is Karen LaVelle Fried. She's an artist, and they actually built this logo based on the mission, which is bringing peace to our world, one chocolate at a time, and that's how they came up with the spin on the dove carrying the olive branch in the story of Noah's Ark, and used a tropical bird, which is a kauai ula carrying a kakao branch, which the chocolate is grown from, to kind of play on that mission and represent what we stand for, what we're here for. So it is pervasive on all the packaging, too, right? Yep, and all the details, even in those little vellums over there and the back of the bags. And I see the design is prevalent on your website, too, which is great. And your business cards, too. It's fantastic marketing. That's a great, great job. And the color schemes, I think, is really nice for the company, too, because it's soft, but has come in to eat me. It eats what you can. Yeah, that's great. We'll talk about packaging later in the show, but I really enjoy these bags because, as you know very well, the Japanese tourists will very much want to take a bag so that they can give this omiage to someone directly. So where do you get, where does the packaging come from? You have to outsource this packaging to, it certainly can't be done much in Hawaii. We do as much as we can in Hawaii. So we work with a local designer named Stacy Nomura to help us create the concept of what we're trying to share, the color scheme, and that consistency across the packaging. And then we have various contributors, like we have our labels done here, our printing done here. Some of our boxes are actually constructed here through print shops. And then we have the certain aspects of it, we do have to export out the magnetic closure on the boxes, those kinds of things. This is an, these are extremely Hawaiian products, which is fantastic. You must have a strong eye for detail because I notice your website, everything is just very attentive. Is that you that's driving all of that? I think it's a combination. I do miss things, but we have like a system for that. We check the website every week to make updates. And then we have a couple of people check it because we have different eyes for different things that we're focusing on within our team. And that's how we kind of try to keep everybody up to date with what's happening and what's going on. So most of the business then comes in through foot traffic into the Manoa store, or is there online sales too? No, most of it is actually through foot traffic. We do, we just started online this year, so we sell our products online, but you still have to come pick it up at the store. We haven't started shipping yet, which we hope to do later on the end of the year when it gets cool again. But most of it is people actually coming into Manoa, and that's what we want. We want to meet our guests. We want them to have an experience, and so we're kind of expanding what we offer in Manoa to kind of make it more worthwhile for them to come out there. Shipping chocolate must be very difficult from a temperature standpoint and what have you. So when you're sending something to Japan, how do you do that? Does it have to go in a refrigerated case, or how does it work? With a lot of care, yes, so we work with care, prayers. We work with a shipping company, we work with JAXI Corporation, and they help us out too to make sure that temperature control, humidity and everything is from the get-go from when it leaves us to the person that receives it in Japan, the timing of everything, and a lot of communication across the board. When's it coming? Where is it going to be next? So it's a bit of a challenge, but that's why we're taking it one step at a time, doing just a few shows at a time. Yeah. So these are certainly premium products, right? These are not, you're not competing with a Hershey Bar or a Baby Root or something like that, right? So a product like this, approximately, what would that cost in the store in Manoa? $24, actually. Well, that's reasonable. Yeah. And how many pieces are inside? That's a half a pound. Yeah. Okay, great. So it's actually a lot to share. It's right over here, too, which we'll put in indulgent and dive into. Oh, that's great. What flavors is? That's our dark chocolate macadamia nut clusters. So it's our signature dark chocolate, and then we hand toss the halves and whole macadamia nuts all grown on the big island. Oh, wow. Would you say you specialize in dark chocolate? Is that fair to say? Yes. I've noticed most of your products seem to be dark chocolate based, which is what I prefer. I find milk chocolate is a little too sweet. But I believe that the Japanese market would be very dark chocolate-oriented. Have you found that to be true? It's kind of, they do like the dark chocolate, but the tendency is for them to buy the milk chocolate from us when they come to visit. And these particular products right here are the only products that we export to Japan, just because this is kind of the line of items that they wanted, like the white chocolate macadamia nut cluster. Which is not a big seller for us here in Hawaii, but that's something that they really love up in Japan. So, I'm still figuring out the market constantly. It's an ongoing struggle. I mean, market changes and market feedback is important. And then one part of Japan might be different from another part of Japan, which we see with lots of products that market in Tokyo could be quite different than Osaka or Okinawa or Sapporo. It's just local taste and local flavor. Some are sweeter, some are not. But you could imagine it's like if you were a Japanese company sending product to New York, it's probably a different taste than Houston or Los Angeles or something. So it's quite similar. All right, let's talk about when you go to Japan. I know you're very busy and traveled to Japan pretty frequently. You're going at least three times this year, right? So that's mostly to trade shows? Yeah. Which trade shows would you be going to? So in May, at the end of this month, next month, we're going to the Oedo Fair in Tokyo in Nihonbashi. That's our first time going there. In July, we're going to Osaka for the Hankyu Hawaii Fair. That'll be our second time there. And in June, we're going to Nagoya. I'm not able to disclose the location yet until I get the go from them. But they're very excited and it's very secretive. There. That's great. Is it a fair or? Yeah, so there are all opportunities for us to sell our chocolates. Just limited availability, but we're always trying to find different ways. Like you said, each fair is different and each client is different. And so this is really a learning process for us. It's our first time going to Tokyo to sell. We've been there for the Tokyo International Gift Show, which is kind of more the buyers coming in looking for products. This is going to be direct to consumers. So it should be really interesting to see how we're received there. I think this Oedo Fair would be perfect for you. There's other Hawaii companies that could benefit from it, too. But this Oedo Fair seems to fly under the radar of many of our companies here. How did you learn about it? Was it through your agent? Yeah, so well, we have an agent in Japan and a really great distributor. They actually approached our distributor and said, we wanted Shokulea to come. And so they asked, hey, would you be willing to come out for this fair? And so we talked about it and we talked to other companies. And it's supposedly a beautiful venue. It's air conditioned. We have a big, beautiful, refrigerated display case that we're going to have there for our products. So they did a really fantastic job setting everything up over there for us. What's the name of your agent in case companies that are watching this show are interested in finding an agent at CFC? Yeah. Great. They're based in Tokyo? They're based in Tokyo. They also have an office in Osaka. But really great team. We email, I don't know, many times a day, actually, as we lead up to shows where we're constantly in communication with each other. Are they specialists in food products or? Yeah, gourmet food products. So they also distribute for lion coffee, diamond bakery and menuhuni mac. Yeah, I know that they have quite a bit of experience working with Hawaii companies. So I also find you bring up a good point. Probably the Oedo Fair people are hesitant to contact Hawaii companies directly because they're worried about the English communication. And so once they know that there's an agent on the ground in Japan that can deal with it in Japanese, that's why they would contact them. But nonetheless, I would recommend other Hawaii companies to please look at this Oedo Fair. I think this is the third year that they're doing it. And it's a great facility, as you said. It is. It's gorgeous. Oh, I can't wait. Yeah, you'll really enjoy it. And it's just a fantastic area. So with that, I will take a quick break with Aaron Uehara of Chocolia and we'll be back in just about a minute from now. Thank you very much. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation, and world, and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Yeah, you're familiar with me. Hi. Excuse me, this is Rob Hack. I'm back with Aaron Uehara of Chocolat on another episode of Exporting from Hawaii. And we're talking today about exporting premium chocolates from Hawaii, particularly to Japan. But Japan's not the only possible export market. Have you looked at Korea or other places? Canada? We're open to it, but we haven't yet. We're still just learning the process of exporting and getting into one country. But definitely, definitely open to anybody who wants their chocolates, you know? You're doing the right thing by taking it step by step across. If you can sell in Japan, then I think you can sell anywhere. We see a lot of companies from Hawaii looking at Australia. There's a natural fit with the surf culture and the beaches and this sort of thing. But Australia has its own peculiarities, not the least of which is shipping. And so if you have trouble shipping from Hawaii to Japan, you'll have even greater trouble shipping from Hawaii to Australia unless it can go by air. And there just aren't that many flights and what have you. But I think that that's a natural market for you is there's a lot of tourists coming in by air and by cruise ships. I could imagine you'll see or listen to that Australian accent in your shop in Manoa once in a while. I think that those tourists are very interested in trying these types of products. But Korea would be natural. I think tourism from China and Taiwan are also increasing. So we could get to that point where you're shipping chocolate over there or at least shipping or having a tourist visit your shop in Manoa. Let's talk a little bit more about your marketing. How do you attract customers to come into the shop in Manoa? How are they learning about it? You know, it's like a mystery. We've been really blessed from the get go from the time we opened our doors. We've had just Japanese tour guide books coming and saying, hey, can we take pictures? Just this morning, a wedding company contacted me and said, can we do a bridal shoot for Japan at your shop? Just that kind of exposure and having even celebrities come, bloggers come. I guess a lot of the times they'll say they googled or they just looked at other people's feeds and wanted to find the thing that's not everywhere or that's kind of still a hidden gem and they can go on an adventure to find it. And that's really where they're coming in from. And then from there, they're spreading the word because now we see them coming in with the guidebook and saying, hey, we want to try this. We saw it here. And from that, it kind of snowballed into opportunities with like NHK news in Japan and a TV show in Japan. And when we do these trade shows, I'm always open to doing radio and TV and stage opportunities at the show and making those connections there and then coming back home and then they can contact me when they're in Hawaii. So are you doing any sort of Japanese language marketing through Instagram? I know your Instagram feed is quite busy. I see a lot of my... We've got to work on that. I know we do need help with the translations. We're able to do some, but we have thankfully people that have been reaching out to us and saying they offer those kinds of services and that's I think the next step that we need to take. Social media-wise, what do you find is best or marketing for a company like yours? Is it Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or everything? Definitely Instagram for us has been the biggest one. I think it's just a lot of pictures all the time, a lot of visuals and people just always want to see what we have, whether they're specials or behind the scenes and that kind of thing. So we do a lot of my stories. We're very active on Instagram. On your website, is there a blog? Anything like that? No, there's not. How about an email newsletter? Do you do anything like that? We do, we do an email campaign. We send that out maybe once a month or sometimes twice a month, depending on the holidays coming up. We just took a stab at YouTube. So we're starting to... That's good. Yeah, we're starting to go on YouTube and create videos. It's definitely not like think tech kawaii. Cool. But having opportunities like this is always great. It's just a way to kind of spread the word and have other opportunities to talk like at the expose. Look at... Making a YouTube video, but look at getting it subtitled in Japanese. I think that would be a fantastic update. It's not expensive. I think that that would be a fantastic thing for your company. Now, you told me offline that a new product that you're working on, a new service, are these workshops, which I think is a great idea. Can you tell us a little more about that? Yeah, no, we're so excited. We've been... People have been asking us for more of an experience. They like to come all the way out to Manoa, have our chocolate, but they want to stay and they don't want to go home. So we started really listening to what everybody is saying they wanted. And a lot of it was they want to see the kitchen. They want to work with chocolate. They want to get their hands dirty. They want to make something and they want to have fun, hang out with friends and bring people that are visiting from Hawaii, looking for new experiences, whether it's with co-workers or girlfriends or mother-daughters, anything. So we're starting something called a dip and decorate workshop, which we've been doing practice runs with and it's been so much fun. Dip and decorate? Dip and decorate. We're doing this this weekend too with another group, but it's basically you come in and you customize, you make a chocolate bar that is completely your own. You pick the toppings and then you pick ingredients and you dip them in chocolate. You may cut chocolate. You eat it all. You drink it all. You take it home. And then in the process, we also are sharing more about our company behind the scenes, answering questions. People want to learn anything about us or chocolate or Hawaii or pretty much anything. It's just been kind of customized to each group to make it the experience that they want and that's what's been really fun about it. So how does somebody arrange for that kind of event or party? That's actually gonna go on our website. Hopefully next month we're gonna announce it. It'll go out on the email, campaign, social media, YouTube, everywhere. What do you anticipate the cost will be? Approximately a little over $100 per person and they're taking home over $50 in chocolates and consuming chocolates on the spot. Yeah. So it'll be there for just signups, individual seats or private kind of blocking it off as an entire event. You can kind of celebrate with a closed group. And it's really intimate. It's about six people. And so it's not a class of 20 or tour, massive tour, it's really intimate. So we get to know everybody. You get to talk to them. How long is the event? Two hours. Two hours. And a good amount of time too. That's great. Yeah. I could see that being an extremely popular activity for tourists coming from Japan, particularly a mother, daughter combination coming in or a group of women coming for a wedding party or something like that. I could imagine that would just be incredible. And $105 is extremely reasonable for that sort of activity, particularly considering what they learn, have fun and then take with them back as omniage. So let's talk about marketing again for a minute. Because what I'm very curious is if you have any kind of strategy or if you've thought about how do you market to tourists coming in and then feed that back into a marketing plan in Japan with your agent there so that those tourists go home to Japan and then buy the product again. Is there any sort of feedback loop there in your marketing? Oh, definitely. I think it's continuous. I mean, we did go to Japan the first few years with just going for research, right? Going to look at what everybody else is doing, what's selling, talking to the people. Even on these trade show trips coming up, I'm actually gonna be at the trade show but then I'm also gonna be spending a day with chocolates here and local chocolate shops in Japan with their owners talking with them, looking at their kitchen, checking out their production lines. And then even, we just have meetings with so many different clients up there and what are they looking for? The first year we went up there, one of the feedback they gave us was your boxes were not 90 degree angles when we fold them and so I was like whoa, we gotta have 90 degree angle boxes and also going to these kinds of events like you speak at about how it has to have the Hawaii brand. It needs to show more of that Hawaii feel and so that's how we kind of customize the packaging a little more to that that still ties in with our brand here and then going up there and doing that kind of research and coming back and just yesterday I was emailing our distributor, they said this company wants something exclusive. They want it limited per day and that's a new concept to us here. We try to make as much as we can to serve as many local people as we can. Up there I learned that limited is a very magical word and that the line is part of the experience for Japanese standing there knowing they can only get the first 10. So learning that last year, we've been brainstorming since then what are we doing that's limited for this year and how do we make it personable because they really wanted to see me, wanted to see the somebody who worked at the company that could have a conversation with them and learning how much that they value that is what we're working on a new surprise for them this year on a way that I can make a personal connection with them in Japan. Great, so for example, this is hypothetical, but you could have the 2019 Golden Week limited edition chocolate of only 100 boxes. That is a good idea for here. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I didn't think about that, I think you should do that here. That's a, I couldn't fully appreciate how the Japanese market would like that sort of thing. And you know where that comes from actually is watches. That's where the watch market drives that limited edition activity in Japan. So Casio and Seiko and Citizen, they all have these very limited edition watches which are packaged slightly differently, little different bells and whistles, but it raises the price considerably. And that's where I think you could do really, really well but there's only one of you, one Aaron Uehara. So how often can you go to Japan, right? That's a difficult part. But that's what I think the Japanese consumer wants the story of the company and the individual baked into the product, right? And so that's why it's very important for you to get out there and be the face of the company. On the other hand, you have to also make chocolate. So it's a very difficult situation for you, I think. But you probably should plan on going to Japan once a month for all of these different fairs. There's tons of hula festivals, all kinds of things. But I think that this feedback loop of your local marketing tied into what you're doing in Japan, I think that that's critical because you want the customer to go back to Japan and remember their time in Hawaii, but particularly their time in Manoa at your facility, eating the chocolate, making the chocolate, talking with you, seeing you. And then they go back to Japan and they see it on the shelf or they're gonna look for the product more and pay a premium price because when they eat that chocolate or give it as a gift, they know the connection to you and they feel that again and they feel very warm about giving the product to an important person in their life, so I think that that's fantastic. We know you're going to Japan at least three times this year. How long do you go for each trip? About a week and a half to two weeks. That's great. I get very frustrated when I learn about our local companies that go just for the show and they leave that night and come back to Hawaii right after the show because you have to get out and see what the market is looking for, the competitive products, the packaging, it reminds me after the show I'll point you a shop you need to go to when you're there so you can see all of these different chocolates from around the world and how you can fit in there. I probably have to extend it longer. Those shows are actually pretty long that we're going to. The await-a-fear, is that a week? That one is short, that one is about three days but the next two are seven and 10, seven and 10 days. Yeah, honks use them for seven days. And with the travel and the time difference, it is like the set-up day, the breakdown, it does a good two weeks just doing that. Do you go by yourself or do you take staff from the store here? Yeah, I'm actually taking staff. So different people for the different trips. The first trip is kind of more focused on production. We're looking at production facilities meeting with people, so I'm taking my production manager. And then in the honkyu, one of our girls speaks fluent Japanese too. She can help me, it's so much fun, but my conversation is limited. Oh, sure. And she's able to probably share a lot more about her company than I can. So I'm excited for them to experience Japan also. Well, that's great training for them though and it's good for the company to have them over there and see what the customers are looking for. One last topic I want to cover before we break is testing for the Japanese market is very important. The Japanese version of the FDA, right? How do you do that in the different parts? Do you have to do it for every SKU? Yeah, for every SKU, it is going through the ingredients process, the flow chart process, going back to any suppliers for any of the ingredients that go into our product, looking back through that supply chain and getting those kinds of information from them. It is very, very challenging to gather that kind of information sometimes. And then we send it up for testing and it's not like we can send a bag. There's a minimum that we need to send up. We pay for that, the shipping and then we get the feedback and then sometimes it gets rejected and sometimes they say, OK, let's go. So that's why we started with just a few products. Like I said, one step at a time. Do you have any idea what is the rough cost per SKU for you to do that? Have you figured that out? Well, if it gets a yay the first time, it could be close to $1,000. Depends on the cost of your product, I guess. It's not crazy unreasonable. Those are the prices I've dealt with in the past. That seems right. I mean, if you were a Japanese company sending something here, it would cost a lot more for the FBA to get it approved. So $1,000 is not egregious. But it's quite streamlined. A lot of the companies that I've talked to here are very nervous about giving their recipe over to the authorities in Japan for the testing. Has that ever, have you ever considered that? Not really. I mean, the only way to grow is you've got to take risks too. So you, I mean, we're focused on more of a mission, actually, of bringing peace to our world while in chocolate at a time. So we're not really focused on what competition or who's going to find out and what are other people going to do, because that would kind of distract us from what we're really trying to do. So that's kind of the way we just keep approaching things. And the final topic is, I know you're working on trademarking in Japan for your logos and your, are you trademarking the phrase about peace, one chocolate at a time? So we're meeting with the lawyer and the doctor up there on the May trip to kind of go over all the different things that should be trademarked and the different components and what category. So I'll be able to talk more about that, I guess, the next time after I come back. We'll have you back in about six months if we can go over all these trade shows in the trip. OK, that's great. So with that, I would like to thank Aaron Uehara of Chocolier here in Manoa. We put up Aaron's contact information and the company contact information so our viewers can find out where to buy the products. On the slide, there we go. Right on Lowery Avenue, it's easy to find. Chocolier.com, your chocolate family at Chocolier.com. Follow them on Instagram. It'll make you hungry for chocolate. I promise you, and that is their phone number. With that, I'm going to have one of these as we close. Thank you very much, Aaron, for being here. I really appreciate it. And we will wrap up exporting from Hawaii and see you again in two weeks. Mahalo.