 I'm Mellie James host of Let's Mana Up. This show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they are growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. My guest today is Sarah Smith, founder of Rappoli and headquartered on Maui. Welcome, Sarah. Hello. So, I'd love to have you start off with, you know, sharing your story. How did you get started? Right, right. I would say it was really born out of a pain point for me. I was a time in my life where all my friends and I are getting married, we're having kids every weekend, wedding showers, baby luau's, weddings, and there's all this wrapping paper at the end. And I felt really burdened because the recycling centers wouldn't accept it, so I'm like that crazy lady at the end of the party like smoothing it out, rolling it up, trying to like sell it to people like, here can you use this or like the old gift bags and it just got overwhelming. Like, I have baskets full of them in the house and finally my husband was like, listen, it's me or all this old wrapping paper, like what are you ever going to do with it? But yeah, like the recycling centers wouldn't take it and I just, I mean, I still probably have some of it like shoved under a bed somewhere. Wait, so how did, so the recycling centers wouldn't take it? Most people don't realize that wrapping paper is not recyclable and why is that? Yeah, so conventional gift wrap, you know, has that lovely glossiness to it. It's actually a plastic coating. A lot of them now to be attractive to the eye have like foils and tinsel and bits of glitter and all sorts of weird stuff added to it. So basically when you recycle a piece of paper, you want to be able to like pull it down and reform it into paper, but all those metallics and plasticine coatings and such make it really hard. They really have to like beat that paper fiber down to get anything useful back out of it to the point where it's not worth it. Yeah, some of that paper, you can't even tear it. It's like actual plastic. Right. Oh, that's the eye. That kind of kills me inside a little bit. Okay, so you were leaving all the wrapping paper, it was filling up your home. Yes, yes. It's there to get through aisles in your living room, your husband's like, it's either me or the wrapping paper. Okay. So then what happened? So basically I just was like, why aren't we using our neighborhood newspaper presses? They're in every town in America and we all know they're printing less papers as more and more people read their news online and so I saw this whole model where we could print great patterns, run them on the newspaper and have this really low carbon footprints and then at the end of the party, your news gift wrap can go into the recycle bin with your newspapers. It could be composted, it's like a biodegradable rock star, it does get thrown out. And then other things too, like I live in Kula at Elevation on Maui so we have a fireplace so like, you know, you're not supposed to burn conventional gift wrap because of all those plastics and metals, it actually can be toxic, but roughly you can use as a fire starter. That's awesome. I think we have some video on the whole big machinery making the newspaper. Yeah. So I'd love to kind of see how the newspaper is being made and I'm sorry, how the wrapping paper is being made. So this is, what's going on here? So this was my early print run. This is at a press right here on Oahu and it's a very old newspaper press and these were my early days of Rappoli where I was really learning how to basically teach an old dog new tricks is what I would say. I mean these presses are like old, they print like newspaper inserts, you know, they're not like, you know, like the color registration is maybe not so accurate and this and that and I had a very expensive education and like every time I printed I learned a very expensive mistake. It was a good education. But yeah, so this was my early press, yeah, right on Oahu. So, okay, so you had this idea like, hi, that is like recyclable newspaper and how many times can newspaper be pulled up out of a recycle? So they, statistics say that a piece of newsprint can be recycled up to seven times and that's because the fiber stays nice and intact, it doesn't get the glossy coating so they don't have to beat it up to try to recycle it and then pull it back down and then also the recycling stream itself is very clean like, you know, newspaper recycling doesn't often get contaminated like maybe other, you know, different types of plastic being mixed together or what have you and in the U.S., newspaper recycling is actually a very strong segment of recycling that's still going, you know, good, whereas the plastic recycling that's getting shipped overseas, they're having, they're really struggling. So it's, yeah, it's great that it's like this nice closed loop. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Okay, so you had this idea. Had the idea. And why are we printing the patterns on newspaper presses? Yeah. So, like I said, it was, you know, time of my life, we're all getting married. I had a baby, then I had another baby, the idea got shelved and I thought for sure like somebody's going to do it. And long story short, after a few years, I came back to it and I kind of told a friend of mine, Tina Fitch, and I was like, I just have this idea and it won't go away. And so she's like, why don't you take it to startup weekend? And so I like literally like busy mom had a job, two little kids, I think the kids were like two and three or three and four years old and flew over to Honolulu like on the airplane, came up with the name Rapoli and here was this, this was 2013. This was this one. Dave McClure was there. Or that was 2012. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So 2013 you pitched this in Onowahu. Yeah. Look at the start of weekend when it was very intimidating because I felt like everybody was really young, so much younger than me and like probably getting more sleep. And yeah, I just pitched the idea, got my, you know, so that first night it's like all the pitches and out of like 100 pitches, 10 were chosen. So I might got chosen and then I got a little team and we worked all weekend and we gave the pitch and ended up winning the startup weekend. The startup weekend is basically two or three days. It's like a full weekend. Right. People have ideas. They pitched their ideas and then people get to pick which idea they want to work on, right? And that's the team you get. Right. And then you just crank all weekend. Everyone's like, you know, just do whatever you're going to do to get this thing done. And then at the end you do your full pitch, which was like five to 10 minutes. Something like that, yeah. And then the judges are there and what happened? Yeah, I pitched the guy from Indiegogo was there. He was one of the panelists. Yeah. I don't know. Somehow I convinced everybody that roughly was a great idea and I won. I didn't win any money, but it definitely was like a shot in the arm. Like, okay, this is like an idea and people think it's cool and resonating with people. Yeah, it's resonating with people. And it was kind of like what I needed at the time to be like, no, you should pursue this. So I actually quit my job. What were you doing before? I was working at a land trust, a nonprofit land trust on Maui. So the start of weekend and winning and everyone being like, this is awesome was enough for you to be like, you know what? I'm really going to go over this. Yeah, not like I didn't like go home and quit. I didn't like going to the restaurant. Right. No, no, no. Yeah, I mean, I did. It took me a while. I mean, it just, I felt at first I was like, I can't believe nobody's done this already. And second of all, like, yeah, I just felt maybe like I needed to build some confidence around it. I think a lot of people go through that when you've got this idea when you're debating, you know, should I keep my job or part time or at what point do I make the switch? And I think it's really different for everyone. And so, right. So, okay. So you, you. Right. So I went early and yeah, I started, I did those early press it runs. And, you know, basically got like a prototype. I used some contacts through a friend and got some patterns. And I mean, really just like scrappy. Like I had no idea how to even approach an artist about getting patterns or what like a surface pattern designer was and, you know, and then like I mentioned with the iterating of the printing, like, you know, there's so many things that can go wrong. You know, newsprint is not coded the actual the ink gets laid down and it dries by absorbing into the paper. And so if you lay too much ink, it's going to be like rubbing off on your fingers when you touch it. It feels like newspaper. Like if your eyes are closed, you'd be like, I'm reading a newspaper. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's two sided. It's double sided, which is really fun when you're wrapping. And so yeah, what I love about this is I'm really horrible about gift wrapping. And I'm also really horrible about what matches what. So I love that you take the guesswork out of it. Right. I love what you've done with these boxes. They're kind of really cool concepts where they both kind of, you know, they mix and match and you can do fun stuff like with folding or the wrapping these are some from our upcoming Christmas or this season's Christmas collection. Yeah. I mean, I always think it's really fun and also, you know, especially at Christmas when we have like stacks of gifts, it's really nice when they're not all the same. So you can, you know, mix and match the patterns and It makes it look like there's more. Yeah. Yeah. Totally right. It makes it look like there's more. I put one shoe in one box and the other shoe in another box. Smart. Smart. Well, I love like I love the Christmas ones, but I also love this one here, which is really featuring some of your collaborations with little artists. Can you speak a little bit about that? I know. Is this one Jana Lam? Yes. Okay. Yes. So I like I said, I didn't know how to approach artists or even what to do, but I was following Jenna early on an Instagram and somebody had given me one of her bags and I still have it to this date. I use it for every craft fair. It's my money bag. So I just started messaging her on Instagram and we formed a great relationship and we've done two collections together and I really learned a lot from her. Like we've grown in the seven years we've been working together and she's, I just have tremendous respect for what she's doing. Her patterns translate so good to any sort of, I mean, obviously she does textiles, but the wrapping paper and paper goods. And I mean, just her iconography and colors. They just speak to Hawaii and they're really popular. They're our best sellers. Yeah. Well, we've got some of the, we've got some of the other gifts here and also some images of some of your other collaborations. Can you share on which other local artists you've collaborated with? Yeah, sure. So I've collaborated twice. Is this Jana Lam here? Yes. That's Jana. And I've also collaborated with Keala Pico. Love those ladies and they do great work. And another one of Jana. That's the other Jana Lam on the screen now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The shells and the monstera leaves, so popular. The Keala Pico, that's a Keala Pico. Yeah, that's one of theirs. So that's on one side of the wrapping paper and then the green is the other side. Right. Okay. Right. I like to pair them. I mean, obviously the fronts and backs are designed to go together. I like to pair them. Yeah, that's another one. That's another Keala Pico. Yeah. So pretty. I mean, it just makes it look so much like a better present, you know? Right. Right. I'm really excited. People really like the aesthetic of Rapoli, you know, of course, like that glossy gift wrap, like that's what we've come to know of gift wrap. But so that's why also I think that Rapoli looks so fresh because it has that sort of like more earthy. It's really like feels nice. You know, it's toothy and the paper is really nice to touch. It has just a more modern aesthetic, I think. That like uncoated organic feel. People really like it. And I get that comment even on like Amazon where we sell. We get comments all the time from people like, people notice my wrapping paper right away. Like my gift really stood out. You know, people tune into that. They walk into a party with a gift wrap in Rapoli and like people are going to comment on that. Yeah. So like what is, people know like what the sustainability aspect of this. Right. How does that layer on to all the other kind of, obviously it's just beautiful. Right. So it's like beauty meets sustainability all packaged up into one thing. But how are you really conveying that message? Well, it's an educational thing. I don't, I try not to be too preachy, but I do like to educate people and I always have wanted Rapoli to stand on its own as far as like just great patterns and beautiful looking gift wrap that you'd want to use anyway, even if you did not care about the environment. But what I do try to do is like let people know we've designed a special little gift tag, a to and from. So when you're giving a gift, have you paid a little extra for this like really lovely sustainable wrapping paper and you're giving the gift on the to and from label, the gift tag. It's printed with soy based inks and recycle me and compostable. And so it's just a little bit of messaging for the, you know, the end consumer of the wrapping paper in hopes that they'll recycle it or just appreciate that and learn and maybe use it. And that's, that's so kind of, it's so front of mind right now, which I think is neat where you're giving this gift, but also people can feel good about receiving it and gift giving and the whole thing just makes it that much more elevated. I'd love to hear more about the sustainability element of Rapoli and some other questions about your entrepreneurial journey after our break. Okay. All right. Thanks Sarah. Yep. Aloha. I'm Catherine Norr and I'm the host of Much More on Medicine on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk about medical issues and I interview guests regarding medical matters and I'm really excited about upcoming guests. I hope you join us every other Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha and see you then. Aloha. I'm Jane Sawyer with the Small Business Administration and one of your hosts for Adventures in Small Business, a partnership with Think Tech and with the Hawaii Small Business Development Center, the Mink Center for Business and Leadership and the Veteran Business Outreach Center. All serving small businesses in Hawaii and telling you the story about their strategies, their ideas, their drive and the way they help Hawaii succeed and be a bright light in small business. You'll find it here every Thursday at Think Tech. Thanks for joining us and we hope to see you soon. Welcome back everyone. I'm Mellie James of Let's Mata Up and today we have Sarah Smith, founder of Rapoli based on Maui. Thanks Sarah for being with us today. Yeah, pleasure. So I know we were talking a little bit about sustainability and the, you said soy based ink. Right. So what are some of the, it just seems so awesome. You've got the newspaper can be recycled and everyone's feeling good, but what are these other layers of like sustainability that you've put into this company? So in the early days, packaging of course, I mean I feel like that's the Achilles heel of any product entrepreneur and I wanted to like be super eco so I was like putting them in these like brown paper bags that were 100% recycled, but of course you can't like, you can't see the paper if it's in a brown paper bag and then people in a retail environment were like pulling it out and the paper was getting overhandled and so I quickly learned like it has to be in a clear package and everybody told me that and I really was resisting like what's the point of doing the super eco thing and then packing it in plastic. But luckily I found this PLA. I mean I think it's the best option out there. It's made of corn. It's plant-based. It's certified biodegradable and compostable and it's clear. It protects the paper and so it felt like a win. Like when I found this, you know, and a lot of municipalities and you know in the mainland and stuff especially where they're doing more industrial composting it really makes sense. For Hawaii, the industrial composting I feel like we haven't gotten there yet. You know it will biodegrade and so that was my solution and it feels good. Like I mean going plastic free is like certainly a movement. I mean I try to do it in my life wherever possible. So yeah that was exciting. It was an exciting moment to like get the new packaging. Yeah I mean then you can fully be behind the package and also people can see it so you can kind of both side. Yeah so what we do is because this was the other challenge like okay so we have this piece of paper and like half of it you know one whole pattern folds to the inside so how do we show people like the reversible patterns so we just came up with this solution to drop like a swatch in on the bottom to show the two patterns in the package so that people could see it without having to open it up. That's like the gift tags. So you got started and you're like I'm doing this quit your job start printing in that old printing press that we saw earlier. What happened so where would sales start and where are you headed to next? Right right so I mean it was definitely I feel like I chose a slow organic growth because like I had two little kids and I wanted to I just coming out of start-up weekend everybody was like go get investments go you know do this and do that and go the start-up route and I was really enamored with that and it was really exciting but I also saw where like if I did that you know making it to the recital on Friday night might be really difficult and I just I don't think my confidence level was there if I'm being totally honest it was like something in me but it was also like I didn't want my family in those early years of my kids lives to suffer from me just being gone too much so it was a choice that I made and I feel like the slow organic growth has helped me have the time to get the confidence and get the product to where I felt really good about it I felt really nervous bringing this sort of like newsprint gift wrap to market like oh you know it's so humble you know a newsprint it is humble but like it's also kind of kicks ass in a lot of ways like it you know it has all these great attributes with the risk like right now you know I mean it's been leading up to that too right yeah so maybe it was timing too so where did you start with like which which stores you went first and yeah where are you at now well I got to give a shout out to Missy over at Owens Co. Owens and Co. right here in Chinatown she's picked me up right away and she's still like one of my best accounts and I'm so grateful to her and Paco Bundo also that Japanese stationery store they they picked me up really early on just some small boutiques on Maui and that's okay yeah and now kind of leading into the Japan piece you've been doing some work in Japan right right so I have let's see I collaborated with this woman who's a professional gift wrapper her name is Shiho Masuda and she's right there in the middle in the middle okay yeah and she's a professional gift wrapper I met here here in Honolulu and she was actually on her way to move back to Japan and so we met and had coffee like the day before she flew back to Japan and she just loved rapidly and started working with it and in her time in Japan was introducing it more and more to different people and people were really resonating with it and she's like listen I really think people are gonna like this you know should bring it here and it's just honestly it had like a life of its own like rapidly just started to grow I was working with e-bed to be like the Tokyo International Gift Show through their high-step program so I got to do tigs and you know that's really great too because then you're in front of the buyers and you're seeing you know the pain points maybe they didn't like the packaging or you know this or that or the patterns they're giving you that feedback right at the Tokyo International Gift Show yeah you know you kind of have to get it out of them I mean you and I went three years in a row so it's also like establishing that rapport I was able to hire a staff this year we filed our trademark we're securing our distribution partners and I'm literally again with that sustainability in mind instead of exporting from the US to Japan I don't want to support conventional wrapping paper that's like printed in China and shipped to the US I took my model of you know there's these presses all over and I took it to Japan so basically I just replicated that whole supply chain in Japan so I'm like printing right where the paper mill is and yeah so again like and then this like corn packaging is pretty unheard of there so I'm right now I'm bringing that in to try to again stay plastic free it's insane the amount of plastic that it's used in daily life in Japan I mean they're excellent with their recycling but yeah so doing the packaging I feel like the eco thing is really a niche that's like growing there this last Tokyo show in September they had a sustainability Expo and like Rapoli was featured and it was so exciting people were like it's this new trend from America and it's really popular and yeah it's good for the world yeah yeah they're definitely like starting to understand and it's really cool that for Rapoli as a brand to be in like on the early days or early stages of that so that feels really good but yeah so with Shiho's help the whole launch of Rapoli has been like okay so we're gonna start manufacturing there and we're doing these gift wrapping workshops so that's what that picture was a gift wrapping workshop and we're theming it like Hawaii themed gift wrapping HIS is a Japan tourism group that specializes in travel to Hawaii so they really love again like all these patterns that speak to the islands and you know the colors and yeah well we know that obviously Japan loves Hawaii right not only that the tourists that do come here but ones that are in Japan everyone's a success of Hawaii which is good right so kind of speaking of which it doesn't mean that you're gonna do good as a business owner I mean I think a lot of entrepreneurs think that whatever Hawaii I'm gonna show up and be like Hawaii and people are gonna love you like you really do like I had to iterate all my patterns like scale them down because these really big patterns that we love here in Hawaii like big you know and so they almost become abstracted on your clothing or on whatever they're in Japan like everything it's just like it frazzles it's just too much like they need like smaller patterns smaller motifs and so I've had to like rework I mean it's been a really cool process but I've seen the yeah the positive reaction mm-hmm so it seems like you've learned some things and have iterated mm-hmm what are some other things that you can share around your entrepreneurial journey around kind of lessons learn that you can share with the audience especially being a Hawaii based your Kamayana girl Maui girl Maui girl right um and like what you've learned this just kind of doing business here and I know of course you've been in the you're in Mana Ups Court for which has been awesome it has been fun but yeah just if you could share any kind of lessons or advice to entrepreneurs here in the island well I think I touched on that I felt like I was doing because I got that you know my foot in the door with the startup weekend but then I chose not to go that route at least initially then I felt like I was doing it wrong to like grow it so slow and in the end now looking back I see it was just what was right for me and so especially you know maybe if you can't quit your job right away or you do have little kids like it's okay to have that slower growth phase especially if you're in it for the long haul like I wasn't never I was never like I'm going to blow this up in two years to sell it boom you know your family and stuff right yeah that why you're talking yeah sure so it's been really special for the kids to like to see rapidly grow and be a part of it yeah so so that slow growth was really important I know you guys went on a trip yeah so how did that was there a lot of reflection in that year or was it just totally yeah so when the kids were born my husband and I really wanted to we had this vision of like taking them around the world so that they knew that there was a whole world out there and it's not just you know who's the best surfer or what have you and this is us and the salt flats on the Bolivian Argentine border yeah so cool so we saved up for almost ten years and that trip and it was really special the kids were eight nine when we started and and I ran rapidly from the road and I was a little nervous like I didn't tell anybody I was leaving I just sort of was like answering emails and if I had to get up at like two in the morning to do a phone conference you know I just would do it and um did the whole digital nomad thing like literally coughest in all over the world and in an RV campers and what have you um cool so I you kind of did the trip and you came back and hit the ground running yeah so I had this epiphany I was like okay I have to make moves with Rappoli and I'm going to go back and double down I've put so much work into it it's been a good spot I've kept it alive this whole year while we've been traveling and I'm going to double down and then like literally two days after I've made that decision on a bus in northern Thailand I got an email like applied him on a cohort four and I was like well okay the universe yes thank you very much for the message I might have fell off my chair so yeah and so like I said like being part of mana of cohort four has been like drinking out of a fire hose but in the best possible way absolutely loved having you you'll be at our showcase coming up which you have a custom mana up wrapping paper all of our guests will get I want to thank you for joining me today Sarah let's mana up and excited to see all the more growth coming from Rappoli based on knowing thank you so much