• Small business success Small business success With rising health care and liability insurance costs, the rapid change brought about through advancing technology, high business taxes and competition from “big box” retailers small business owners today face many challenges in
• Small business success
Small business success
With rising health care and liability insurance costs, the rapid change brought about through advancing technology, high business taxes and competition from “big box” retailers small business owners today face many challenges in addition to the basic costs of business.
Two Kapa‘a businesses are showing that it’s still possible to succeed on Kaua‘i. The Island is known as a place where it is arguably more of a risk to open a business than in Honolulu or on the Mainland due to the “Price of Paradise” that seems to cause a rise in the costs of just about everything.
These two businesses are moving ahead through innovation and through applying the Hawaiian concept of aloha. Both show that caring for their customers as well as making a profit is a winning proposition.
Jeanette Otsuka Chang of Otsuka’s Furniture & Appliances was the receipent of an award from the American Psychological Association, which has named Otsuka’s one of the top 10 “psychologically healthiest workplaces in the nation.”
The organization is one of the country’s largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology. Chang won the award for the home cooking she does for her employees, including making tasty corned beef and cabbage.
Chang has built up Otsuka’s into a 21st century home furnishing business, transitioning one of Kaua‘i’s oldest businesses following a fire, a hurricane and family deaths without losing sight of the store’s roots in Kapa‘a town that go back about 80 years.
The other business, or rather businesses, is the Killer Juice Bar and the Country Moon Rising bakery. The business owners are Cece and Michael Rickett. Starting in business in the years of economic downturn following Hurricane ‘Iniki in 1992, the couple has created a highly visible business at the Killer Juice Bar. That business will soon close so they can focus on their bakery, a business not quite so well known.
Persevering through the hard times, and continuing to offer good products and service are attributes these businesses have, and attributes that we can all apply in facing the challenges of our daily life.
Their success gives hope to the entrepreneurs of Kaua‘i who are perhaps taking a harder road then found in most American communities to be able to live in paradise, as well as making a viable living.
Congratulations to these two Kaua‘i businesses, and best wishes for continued success.
