 Welcome to Adventures in Small Business. This is a collaborative effort by the U.S. Small Business Administration, Hawaii District Office, Hawaii Small Business Development Center, the Patsy Ming Center for Business and Leadership, and the Veteran Outreach Center for the Pacific. We showcase most locals, most businesses here. My name is Sandra Kancinos and I'm with SBA Hawaii District Office. Today we have Marina Nishimura who owns Illuminati Group LLC. Welcome Marina to the show. Thank you for having me. So I just was wondering about, you know, your business and say how did you get started and what inspired you to get into the lighting? Well, the Illuminati Group, my business started in 2012 here in Hawaii. It was a family business in Japan that started and we created a Hawaii version of that. Okay, so you started in Japan and about 20 years ago back in 2000 when LED was still very new. My father was a pioneer of the LED product. Do you have big projects out there in Japan? Right, he does. There's a couple businesses that he does. The main business they do in Japan is illumination events where they have like a light park where people enter enjoy the lights at night. Like kind of Christmas time? Christmas time. They have some for the summer and also for the spring time as well. And then how did that come about over in Hawaii? We had an opportunity, a conversation with the government to do something similar to that when they saw that in Japan. So that's how we came to Hawaii. But our business has changed since the time we started in 2012. Okay, and then I was wondering about the LED movement, you know, being environmentally conscious here in Hawaii is very big. So I was wondering, has your business adapted to that? When you do light installments, things like that, do you put that in consideration when you do a job? Yes, well, everything we do is any product that we use are all LED, so we are very energy conscious. We work with Hawaii energy, so we like to maximize and use their rebates to have businesses convert to LED. We also try to be a part of, HIKO wants to be fossil fuel in about 20 years, so we hope we can contribute to that as well. Okay, and what type of different lighting services does Illuminati Group offer? There's the commercial side and the decorative side for the commercial side. We sell products for upgrading for parking or interior for lighting for businesses, as well as we do energy consulting services and calculations as well. On the decorative side, we create custom lighting for Christmas or any for business further customized signs all created by LED. Okay, and is there different types of LED lighting that you recommend or that your company specifically use for your projects? It varies for the commercial side. There's various LED products, so if there's parking light, then we recommend parking light lighting. There's many different products. For the commercial side, we have LED string lights to create lights which I can explain more when the photos come up. We also have LED neon which is really exciting. We use various LED products. And since you've done, that's a niche industry. Is there any projects that we can actually see while walking down the street that your company has done for the city, for buildings, for anything like any resorts, anything like that? For the decorative side, our projects can be seen year around at the Moana Surfrider Hotel at their Banyan Tree. Can we pull up the pictures for that? Okay. The Banyan Tree, this is a year around lighting. This one was lit up in pink for Valentine's Day. It's pre-programmed, so we can change it to different colors. It's really exciting because we're able to preset the lighting and it can change by the hour, by the minute, or every Valentine's Day, it'll change to pink and we can make it so it can move with music as well. Okay. And then the other projects that we've done. Is that the Royal Hawaiian Hotel? This is the entryway. That's coming up as well. So that was the entryway lighting. So these are more of our permanent commercial, our decorative lighting that can be seen on the island. This is on the commercial side. As you can see, the left and the right. The right is where we upgraded to LED. The left is the side where it hasn't been converted yet. So, you know, our client was very happy because they were able to have, it was brighter and also they were able to save on their energy and also for savings too. So when you do this type of work for lighting up, say a parking lot, is there a huge benefit by having the LED lights installed as in financially? Some businesses are able to recoup the cost as early as six months, eight months, or it could take about three years depending on the project. So whatever lighting that they have now, we're able to show them the calculation and see how much they can save. But they do, I mean, not only are they becoming more green and energy-conscious, but they're also saving on energy costs, reducing on electricity bills. And if you keep the pictures rolling as well. That's at Mercedes-Benz showroom. There's various types of LED lights. This is going back to our decorative side for the holiday. We've done some decorations at the Kahala Ma, Kahala Hotel, I'm sorry. So what we do is we create custom designs for each hotel. The next picture is at Centro Pacific Bank. This is something that we work with the bank and created a custom installation and design based off of their facade of the building facade. So this can be seen during the holiday season. This is more of the decorative side of this is the LED neon sign. And this is all that we create customer signs for local businesses. We've made signs for the public pair, sweat and sole. We've created custom signs for that. And also people have been using that for weddings. Okay. So you also do for weddings? We just create the signs. We don't do the installation. But if anyone wants a custom sign or for weddings or birthdays, that's something that we provide. Okay. And then today you brought a couple of products that we wanted to showcase today. This is something new, a new product that we have. This is made out of bamboo. When you see it, it's like this, but it turns on. So people can post it out and outside their store window or something like that. Okay. And then we also have a bigger sign. So this is our aloha sign here. Okay. So these are all made from bamboo? Bamboo, yes. We're able to custom make designs. We're making a sign for a company here too. So anything with LED, that's what we specialize in. It looks so nice. Okay. And then any for the holiday season or another, you've done a specific bank. Do you do for the city anything like that? Not for the city, but for businesses. For this coming season, for the custom side, we're creating some, not just for Christmas for New Year's, the Moana Surf Rider, Sheraton Waikiki are having a New Year's event and some of our LED designs will be displayed. So who designs the pineapples, the aloha? Who comes up with the concept? Who says, let's take bamboo, make the sign, light it up the way that it lights up? We have a designer in our team. That's also my sister. So she's the graphic designer. She creates all the designs to make it into reality. And what inspires you to stay in this line of work or, you know, get into the lighting business besides, you know, coming from your dad, from Japan all the way to Hawaii? What's nice, especially for the decorative side, is you work on a project with a customer. And it's nice when you're able to see it installed or displayed. And then, you know, when people are happy to see the displays, that makes us, makes me happy. Okay. And I was wondering, do you have any plans to expand outside of Hawaii? We do projects in Japan right now. We've created some custom signs worldwide. We had a couple inquiries for permanent installations for the Bahamas and also in the Middle East, but we haven't got there yet. So hopefully in the future, we could do more of that. Okay. And then if you can, you know, think back, what were some of your challenges that you had in the beginning, you know, finding LED lights, you know, because we are in a small island off the coast of, you know, miles and miles away from the mainland. So what, what challenges do you think, you know, you have one you've had and then what advice would you give to a small business that also wants to go into this industry? Especially since we live in Hawaii, one of the biggest challenges I had was shipping and the calculating, the shipping was very hard. And when we first started, no one really knew us. So it was hard to bring the shipping costs down or we was still understanding that. So now we're doing better, but shipping was very, it's very difficult. Okay. And then what type of advice would you give, you know, somebody who's wanting to start in the same industry? Or, well, maybe I'm in the same industry or for Hawaii, I think being in the starting a business here in Hawaii, what I realize is there's so many good people here in Hawaii that are willing to help you and give you advice to help with your business. So I think that makes Hawaii very special. And I think, you know, for a business, there's so many things that you know, at the time I didn't know. And I would, to ask people for help and ask for, you know, their advice or their feedback really helped me grow our business. So I know that I would ask about challenges. Have you had any unique problems with the industry that you're in, say? Well, tariffs. Tariffs have gone up a lot. And that has affected me. You know, that increases our price. So that does hurt our business, but that's something that we need to, I guess, you know, every industry is having issues right now. So that's something that we need, that's some of our challenges right now that we're trying to adapt to. Okay, and then going back to your projects that you've done from the photos, of course, what would you say would be the one that really just, you know, inspires you over and over again that to see your work? Two different parts. The decorative side is when I'm able to see the permanent installations and, or the Christmas installations, and when I see the public enjoy and take photos and hear from our clients that, oh, their tenants are very happy to see the lights and that they're very excited. That makes me happy to see the end product as a success. The second part is the commercial side when we're able to save money for our clients and then because they upgraded to LED and that we're able to convert them to more energy efficient or have them become more energy efficient, that's very special. Any buildings that are iconic that we can see the work in that they've done for the commercial side is a little more, it's not as exciting, but for the decorative side was the permanent installations of the Moelana Surfrider, the Royal, the Christmas time we've do lights at James Campbell Building in Kapolei as well, some smaller projects at Duty Free too. So it's various locations, yeah. Okay, we'll be right back and we'll take a short break. Hey, hello everyone and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii Studio. My name is Andrew Lanning, I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii. We air here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time trying to bring you issues about security that you may not know, issues that can protect your family, protect yourself, protect our community, protect our companies, the folks we work with. Please join us and I hope you can maybe get a little different perspective on how to live a little safer. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Mellie James, host of Let's Mana Up. Tuesdays, every other Tuesday from 11 to 1130. This show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they're growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. I'm so thrilled to have our show kicked off and so please join us on Tuesdays at 11 o'clock as we talk to local entrepreneurs and hear their stories. Hi, we're back with Marina, who's the owner of Illuminati Group LLC. Thanks Marina again for coming in and I'm just wondering what I'm picking up from the conversation. What, not challenges, but what has helped you in starting your business? So what organizations have helped you starting your business? So in my business what we tried to do is I wanted to expand the government and I went online and I saw SBA had workshops to assist businesses who wanted to be in the government so that's when I reached out to SBA and I've met with Mary Dow who's been very helpful and resourceful and helped guiding me through the government process and introducing us to people. Through that she, I didn't know what was available, she also told me about SBDC which is Small Business Development Center and also Patsy Mink and told me those are good resources to reach out to so with Patsy Mink I've met with them and you know sometimes I need a guideline, a guide on how expand my business or to sometimes you know sometimes with the business side tracks it was nice to have someone to talk to and give advice on what I should be doing next to grow my business and with SBDC they've been very helpful on letting me know how to grow in the government sector and also I, we were working on an RFP for Innovate Hawaii and then they were helping, they were very helpful helping me you know edit or you know change by helping me make revisions on my RFP proposal for them so the, all the SBDC, Patsy Mink and SBA were very resourceful on you know guiding me through and helping me in the government side. I'm glad to hear that so besides the government side what do you see your business going in the future? In the future well I, we hope that when we first started, well I should have explained is when we first started it was very difficult because especially for the decorative side many people, we had projects in Japan and I had pictures to show clients but they never saw that in person it was hard for me to explain to them like oh what my, my business or they're like oh they were hesitant because it was not done in Hawaii before and it was hard for them to make a decision based off of pictures but that the beginning was hard for me to find clients who would would believe in us and we were fortunate to have a handful of them at the start that did that helped us grow our business but and you know gain more through word of mouth yeah but from now I hope that we can still organically grow and work with more hotels and businesses and also well the government is our next part where we want to grow for the commercials. So where do you see your your business and the local and business community? Well I hope that we're able as a led supplier and a system design company I hope that we are able to help large or small businesses become more energy efficient that we're able to convert and make Hawaii more green. Awesome well thank you so much for coming in and joining us in this session um thank you I really appreciate you guys coming out and is there a website or an address that people can go to to buy your product or see your product or services? Yes our website is Urumanaj, Hawaii, I-L-L-U-M-S-M-E-R-I-N-S-N-N-C-A-G-E-Hawaii.com We don't sell products online it's more custom-based so they could send us an email at contact.illuminajgroup.com or call us at 808-53-266-88. We're available anytime. Okay awesome thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week. Thank you.