 Good afternoon. Hi. My name is Ricky Cassidy and I've been hosting this show for about six segments now. Thanks to a great friend of mine, Dennis Azaki. I have sad news about Dennis. When he invited me to come on this, he was alluding to his not well. He understated it. He passed away this week. He is sorely missed. He got me into this as a friend and he had named the show after his particular interest, which was land and politics. Dennis, for those of you that didn't know him, was one of the few Japanese people living or growing up in Anahola, Kauai, which is on the east side, very rural and very Hawaiian. He had three or four brothers, all of which were accomplished. He himself specialized in surveying. Guy was tough as nails, went all over the Pacific as a surveyor with some really great companies, came home and started arguably the best surveying and engineering company on the island. With a close friend of his, Wayne Wada, they grew up together in Anahola. I segue this in part because I want to jump over to my guest today and give him a little context and you, the audience, of what I'm doing here. Dennis's proclivity for land came because he believed in surveying. He extended that into a true depreciation of land policy and how it's changed over time and he would argue what was best for local people in terms of the trend in adding regulations to development or liberalize them. He's a bear on tax policy, did not want property taxes going up for us. And of course then he segue that into politics because that would be the regulating force behind it. Where Dennis and I kind of intersect was an appreciation of land, my particular appreciation for land, slightly different. I do market research and I see lots of people outside of Hawaii coming here to buy land and to live here high quality of living. And that gets me over to my guest today whose expertise is aloha shirts and where we intersect on that is that aloha shirts have been wildly successful. Perhaps even a surrogate for buying Hawaiian land you get to buy a Hawaiian aloha shirt and live that quality of life without being in Hawaii. And he and I, old friends talk long about things. His father and I, my father did, we're both businessmen and we grew up in that context and I'm going to let him kind of talk a little bit about how he got into the business. And the kinds of things that resonate with him and then resonate with the locals and then resonate with the rest of the world. So Dale, take it over. Thank you, Ricky. I've just had a passion for aloha shirts ever since I was, I can think all the way back to third grade. My dad was a shirt maker when I was growing up and about the third grade my father came home with a whole bunch of aloha shirts for me that I could wear to school. And they were very unique and one of the patterns had beach boys wearing blue macahas those were long shorts with stripes on the sides playing the ukulele wearing the coconut hats having the aunties in the background doing the hula. And I wore that shirt, I think, until it was bread bearing, you know, it's just, it was just my favorite shirt echoed the spirit of the beach at Waikiki. Down when there were more coac canoes on the beach in Waikiki than there were hotels, you know, there was the Royal and the Moana and there was all these great bronze beach boys and, you know, at the end of the day they would always wear these really neat shirts that were Hawaiian shirts, aloha shirts. You would. And they kind of set the hook on me early on one that they were these ocean going guys, they, you know, almost had gills on their sides they were always in the water doing something really exciting. And then they wore these great gorgeous shirts that kind of connected them to a place which was that beach and Honolulu and Waikiki. So it's just been something that kind of grew with me early on and then I started working with my dad in the 70s. And, you know, many years, I was able to get the name Kahala, which was a early garment manufacturer started in 1936. And it had been a dormant name for a long time. So I was able to change our company to Kahala by HRH, which was the other label we were using. And we went out and stole a lot of shirts and started developing our prints with artists or textile artists or fine artists and we started really having fun with it and doing prints that we thought would identify with our customers. And, you know, we got to work with people like Avi Kariati, a really great block print and oil painting artists that was originally on the big island. And from Avi, we went with John Severson and then we got to work with, you know, John started Surfer Magazine, he was a fabulous artist living in Maui and I used to go over there and work with him, we'd work together. And we started working with Yvonne Chang, a notable artist on the island of Oahu, her art hangs in many of the banks and finer homes throughout the islands. And I was able to conjure her into thinking about doing textile designs and it took a long time, but we ended up working with Yvonne and had a great relationship and have worked with many other fine artists, textile artists, many people all around the world to create all the designs we've done. We've done well over thousands of designs over the years. It's really trying to, I think, capture that spirit of Hawaii that you and I appreciate that we grew up with and echo that on fabric and shirts. So we kind of communicate to people that we respect this place, we appreciate this place and we admire all the attributes of the Hawaiian islands that we can put into a shirt. And they come and wear them and smile and be happy that we're replicating something that he speaks of a wonderful spot. One of the things I thought was so cool when I came home from Hawaii and I'd been gone, say, from 76 to 90, 90 something like that. He had started Kahala with Avi, who was a very strong and powerful artist in the sense that is, that was the effect of his clothes. And what struck me was your palette of being bright and colorful and cheerful and powerful. And I don't mind if I'm wrong, but I'd come from, in part, living in England, where the palette of that fashion was taken off of the Moors, meaning mustards and light and dark browns and gray skies and the whole thing. They did it very well. Burberry is a world fashion, world-renowned TM pattern. But again, it's not a bright color. What I liked about that bright color is it resonated. I moved back to Hawaii from Silicon Valley and there's a whole bunch of guys over there that just started buying that stuff and showing up at the office. And so you want to speak about, you know, what happened there? I mean, you did do colors probably stronger than a lot of other people in a different way than C. Jams did, which is pretty bright, but not very detailed. And then the success you had in California and other places. Yeah, thanks, Ricky. You know, I think Cams, Dave Rocklin was, you know, he was a genius and he was our hero and he's in large part why I even thought about going into the garment industry. And he had the freedom to fail and he would do things that were brighter, say, than most other companies. But, you know, he kind of had something for a little bit younger generation that was speaking out and getting more attention where our shirts were a little bit calmer. But we also wanted to have really nice color combinations in our shirts. Our shirts were geared for the downtown comma, I know, businessman. We had button down collars and half pocket shirts, much like what Ren Spooner had done. So we were, we were selling to the businessman so in the banker and the guys trying to conduct business so you can't make them too bright. But you don't want to put anybody to sleep either. So you want to, you want to have some vitality in your print, but it can't be too crazy. And, you know, oftentimes back in those days we did a lot of reverse print. So you take the fabric that are making the shirt on the right side, which we did for the tourists because they liked it brighter. We made it reversed for the downtown comma and a businessman. And that made it a lot more subtle. And, you know, our designs were fun. John Severson did great art that was a lot more colorful. He pushed the envelope quite a bit with what he was doing for us. We had some other guys like California artists, surfer Ron Anderson, his were really colorful and probably some of our best sellers too. So we had a variety of artists and we were doing 150 designs a year. So we had, we had all spectrums, you know, super bright and in the middle and softer. And one of the things that you and I had as an experience was going to the Philippines and we walked into their major shopping. I think call it Magnum or whoever it was just we walked into the store start looking at shirts and lo and behold were a bunch of Hawaiian shirts. And the irony was, and you pointed it out was that they had reversed the reverse. So they seriously had copied this and then instead of the words being backwards, they were now forwards. And it was crack up. But the fact that we could that this was going on in the Philippines when we went there maybe 20 years ago also kind of reflects back to how it spread. My guess is principally on on the West Coast and then it went to the East Coast. And if you did, you know, that many designs a year. What, if anything, can you say, was there any segmentation in the market in other words, was there a West Coast popular. Look, as opposed to Hawaiian as opposed to East Coast. Or did it trend and blend a little bit of all, you know, in Hawaii we sold just about everything because you have the come on a business guy you're selling to you also have the resort visitor. And the resort visitor likes things brighter and come on I like some a little bit more refined a little bit more dressed up but down color. California liked it fun. And we really weren't selling the resort world in California we were selling the Newport Beach guy and the San Diego guy beach community stores is really who we sold to. So they're wearing the reverse print Ivy League shirts a flacket with shorts and real happy in Balboa Newport and Diego and areas like that. In Florida, we sold a lot of fish shirts, fish were King in Florida, everybody fishes in Florida. So not they didn't really understand the reverse so as much, but they do understand all their favorite fish so after going there fishing with other the for it for it ends. And spending time there, we really started doing a lot of fish designs, which they really accepted and appreciated. So with that experience you also went through the Japanese bubble, you ended up selling Kahala and moving over to Patagonia. In the middle of that, for some reason you decide to write a book of the last person on earth that I would have expected. I tried to convince and you wouldn't listen to any of my bad advice, but in so doing that. You then you got a chance to see the Japanese market in their taste. You got to see Patagonia which basically is a cold weather cold water company. How they dealt with a lower shirts or just fabrics and designs any any thought about that. Well that's kind of two questions in one so first. You know I worked on the book, and that was something that was really intriguing to me because I've been in the industry. And I knew a little bit about the history. And if you remember you were helpful in introducing me to the Chun family. Oh, Richan was noted as the first person to ever create yellow shirt because he registered the name. And I met somebody in the Musashia family, Mrs. Musashia. And she said, you know, I wouldn't make the first a lower shirt, but you know the pocket on the street he got all the credit, but no big deal, but I wouldn't make them. So you had this interest of these Asian diversity in downtown Honolulu a block away from each other. And they were using Japanese copy create fabric for women's rose and women's gowns and women's clothing. And they were they were making those into shirts. And that's really how the whole thing started between El Richan and then the Musashia small, you know, specialty stores. Not, you know that that has grown an enormous business and you want to think of how many millions of lower shirts have been made since 1935. It's going to be amazing. And in 1935 in August, like a week after John Barrymore goes into the store to the Musashias and says he wants a shirt. There's the picture of Shirley Temple at age five down at the harbor where 10,000 people came out to meet this childhood rock star. He's wearing a Musashia shirt, Sailor Moku's charm bracelet. And from there it really starts with the movie stars and then we've got Duke Honolulu and he starts wearing them. Then you've got all the Hollywood stars that wear them in movies. And it really starts to go nationwide in America from Hawaii to California and New York. Then we've got our best ambassador, Duke Honolulu. He's an Olympic champion. He's a sheriff. And he gets hooked up with Kahala in the late 30s. He's an ambassador with them. He goes with a company in New York called Cisco and they have national distribution for all the finer better men stores throughout America. And they're making beautiful rayon short sleeve long sleeve shirts. All the guys in the movie Here to Eternity, Bing Crosby and Bert Lanz Kaster, all those guys are all wearing Here to Eternity shirts. So that helps get spread them out internationally, you know, beyond the shores of Hawaii. So it's been an interesting, you know, ride for the yellow shirt, Elvis Warrom, Tom Selleck Warrom. We've got, you know, George Clooney Warrom in the movie Descendants. He wore a shirt that we made. So, you know, the Obama wasn't so big on him. He censored Aloha shirts for the APEC Summit, I think back in 2011. But, you know, they've had a lot of endearment from a lot of international people. Yeah, they have, they do have legs in the sense that they've traveled. And what I was then going to say was, Patagonia picked them up, but also the high end retail stores you were describing going back just recently to the East Coast and doing a book signing at a very high end retail store that was the brainchild of Ralph Lauren, who himself was very successful taking a basic look and just expanding on it. Wildly so. I was in England when he started. Sidebars that I came back home to Hawaii, got one of your shirts that said HRH on it. To get back to England, the customs guy looked at the shirt saw HRH and he wondered. Allowed, and he actually took the shirt he said is, has this been sanctioned by the royal family. Royal Highness. So, you want to comment about Ralph Lauren and that experience that would be great. I love to it's funny because HRH my dad was Howard Robert Hope and labels made because he used to gamble on on Wednesday nights with all the buyers for all the better bigger stores and all the other manufacturers all together and they, those guys all called my dad HRH and so we had those labels laying around as a joke. And when I started working with them. I needed a label and he said use this like I don't want to use that you don't have a choice. Yeah, you know, and just for a second with Patagonia Pataloja. Now Patagonia was a company that made clothes that was going to save your life Pataloja was something that you could wear to be more relaxed and have fun and Pataloja really came from real son. You know, our great ambassador of a law and women's surfing champion from the West Side Macau real son. Yeah. And she befriended the shenards when they came out to Macau to a surfing contest and she ended up going there to work for them. And she designed prints for Pataloja. And then she also wrote a note to Melinda Yvonne's wife, their co owners of Patagonia. And really said that there was time for them to consider a book on Aloha shirts. So in, you know, 10 years ago we published a book with Patagonia on the Aloha shirts. That's 384 page book and it's really great because it honors Rell's wishes. Yeah, it's pretty special. That I did not know. Yes, she was a great surfer. Oh, and a great woman. Unfortunately, she never got mad at me for giving her a low score when I just the surfing heat unlike some of the bigger male surfers who really could do me some harm. But I would have given her a 10 for just battling out. Yeah, no, she was an she had an extraordinary grace. You and I love the water we love surfers we've loved in the water you get authenticity it's kind of hard to hide. And one of the great things in my life, although my dad at the start was somewhat skeptical whether surfing was good for me or not did kind of create my business career by five or six years was, you know, following something that you loved, because it was that really powerful awesome cool. It was life giving. And we have seen that many more people jump into it but that the same standard of, you know, be fun in the ocean as well as competency in dealing with it. And then kind of like a lower shirts did the number of design modifications improvements on for one of the better word aquatic toys and how big that aquatic toy industry has become. There must have been. Not just in your life is the crossover between the lower shirt in Waikiki and the surfing. One of your better prints was a surfboard design in which you incorporated arguably the best surfboard designer I've ever seen. Dick Brewer. Hopefully, nobody's that's still alive will call up and say I was better than Dick, but tell us a little bit about working on on, I mean, on surfboard templates it's not easy. You know, Ricky, back in the days when we would go down to Tongs, I was at Bessie Winkler's house one day and and Joey Cabell came in and he told me that he was meeting Dick Brewer to design a board. And I looked at him and he had it all drawn out on graph paper. And I went, wow, you're, you're, you're, you're really, you know, pretty deliberate about what you want. And he goes, well, the surfboard shapers only as good as the information he gets from the surfer. And I was like, wow, you know, and that was pretty amazing. So I always followed Dick Brewer fell out of 16 in those days. You know, all my life. And I knew that he was the quintessential shaper for the surfing stars if you would in our lifetime. And so we asked Dick if he would draw out all the meaningful boards that he did in his career. And we got these kind of just scratched out line drawings of boards that really you could tell the shapes and what was going on in the sketch shape and all that but you know, I had to justify this a bill that, you know, we were going to pay Dick for these drawings, and it was really just chicken scratch on a bunch of sheets of paper. But we added some sort of mid century modern blocks of color, blotches of color in with these boards. And we created that print about 20 years ago. It's still I think Kahala is number one print today. They're doing it really, really well. And they've also used it as the salt and pepper shaker print. Now, in first class in Hawaiian Airlines, they have a little origami shirt, and then they they do it as a little, little salt and pepper holder, and it's the Dick Brewer shirt. So it has it has life way beyond just being a sure but that's everybody's favorite shirt. For sure. So let me get into an argument. I lost with you wrongfully so. When you started the lower ship book captivated me I said okay great this is a product where you can go to Omaha. And, and people go, Oh, reminiscent of when Bruce rounded endless summer. And he showed it in the Midwest, and crowds came and went, Wow. So, from that epiphany of sorts. I started saying, Okay, what else what are the other products that you can do a book on and take do a book on what are the other Hawaiian products that you can do a book on go to Omaha, and they go, aha. And there wasn't many. You let me struggle a little bit on on on identifying it. So I did do the Hawaiian support. I said, Okay, not that they'll recognize it, but it's unique to Hawaii. I branched out a little and I said the Hawaiian detective movie with Charlie Chan to Tom Selleck I kind of like that one. That probably would have made money. And then the other was the Hawaiian hotel room. And in recognition of the name of this segment also Dennis is hockey. It was that kind of thinking that attached somewhat to the reality that over our lifetime we've seen more and more people move here and real estate prices go up and up and more and more resort. Being built. Now, here's the money question. Leaving everything else I set behind. Are we at it? I mean, when we grew up, there's hardly any tourists now. I think I can say there's too many. Do you have any thought about, you know, that and and and what it means for the future both you and I would have to agree that that our business relies on repeat buyers. But I mean, as a Kiki Hokaina. Child of Hawaii. What do you think? Well, you're kind of taking us away from the lawyer sure. Subject here but you know obviously if they all come and they all want to buy a lawyer shirts and we think it's a good thing right. Right. That's what that's what my father did when he started his business. He was making shirts for the visitors. In those days there weren't that many hotels or stores and as we grew up there were more stores more hotels more people jets. You know people weren't coming on boats anymore they went from prop planes to jets and more jets more airlines. And you know today we've got kind of a saturation point. I believe where everything is pretty, pretty stressed out. You know our oceans are very, very full. And we don't have enough bathrooms for and we don't have enough facilities for them. We're really lucky sometimes here on this island, if the number one beach in Hawaii. A puna has running water. So I think we've stressed out our natural spots and our places where everybody wants to go. We've advertised them to the extent where they're being overcrowded I mean look what's happening everybody wants to go to your island to go to Kawaii go to Honolay go to high end up. And that's been stressed out so you know, sure it's all great for business good for hotels car rentals and everything else but what's the cost to the, to the island to the land to the island. I think, you know, those are questions that we, we need to ask the days when people came to visit in our parents generation. They came on the learning there weren't too many of them. They were treated like royalty they were treated by the kings on the beach, all the beach boys, and they had an experience that was incredible. And they left being touched in their hearts that these wonderful people, men, women, you know, gals at the end of the day would they play ukulele and sing songs and the girls would do the little right there on the beach where their moomus. And they'd wear a lay and share flowers with their guests. And that was pretty incredible. Today everything's plastic lays and too many people so. So, you ask a question about a little bit earlier about going back to the mainland going back to the Hamptons and, and doing a little book talk in that double RL Rostler and store. And I will say that the aloha spirit back there was really alive and well people want to know about Hawaii. They want to, in their minds, be able to put a little space in there for a future trip to go to Hawaii They all came out to probably one of Rostler and best stores double RL is the pinnacle of what he really wants to do. They're curated beyond belief they're the most elegant stores I've ever been in. And that store was packed I mean there was no standing room, but people came to learn about the shirts they came to learn about Hawaii. And to get a little taste of something that they know they want to have a part of. They want to come here they want to see what we have. They want the warm water the sunshine, beautiful flowers lays, you know, they, they brought lay to the Hamptons and people had them and there's Hawaii flowers everywhere was it was an insane incredible event they made cookies. All out of the images of the aloha shirts that were in my book, but the baker who did them gets five stars. She replicated Jerry Lopez's board that's in the book. With the patio print that Michael Cassidy did on the board. And they were, they were no bigger than that big, and they were incredible, along with all these other images so you know we, we, I think, have some homework to do to manage our visitor count and to keep it elegant in Hawaii and not let it go to you know such a like a Vegas experience. Which I fear it's heading more in that direction than maintaining the elegance that we once have. The reason why I had you here was to talk about the spirit, the spirit does infuse the land, but the spirit goes beyond the land across the ocean everywhere. We're way past our time. And realistically, but this is a nice moment. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, you bet, Rick. Thanks for having me with you today. Appreciate it. Good fun. Aloha. All right. Take care. Aloha. Mahalo.