HANAPEPE — The social media announcement on Tuesday said the closing of Mariko is the “end of an era.”
“Mariko’s huge store is closing permanently,” the Mariko Hanapepe announcement said. “Everything goes at half off starting Jan. 1, or longer until most of it is sold.”
Mariko’s owner Tony Tay said the children have no interest in continuing the business, his wife passed away a few years ago, and it is the right time.
“Even the building is for sale,” said Clifton Tay, a son who is helping Tony with the store’s closing. “We own the building, but the land is leased from the state.”
Local shoppers like Edie Ignacio Neumiller and Cyndi Ayonon were checking out the deep discounts on material in the store on Tuesday.
“This is my third visit here since I found out,” Neumiller said. “The first time I came with Laurie Ho, the second time my husband was with me, and today, I have Cyndi who is looking to find matching accessories for her Ni‘ihau jewelry.”
Tony said Mariko started in the 1980s after his son was born.
“We started in the Weinberg round building (that is currently the home of the Office of the Mayor and other county departments),” Tony said. “Following a move to where there is an optical center, we moved to Hanapepe in 1994, right after the hurricane.”
The name “Mariko” is a play on words from the Japanese, Malaysian and English languages.
“I’m originally from Malaysia,” Tony said. “We played around with ‘business’ in Japanese, and ‘pretty’ in Malaysian. We were supposed to end with ‘co,’ but someone changed it to ‘k-o’ instead of ‘c-o.’ It’s been ‘Mariko’ since then.”
The huge, spacious building came from the numerous stops by tour buses to view what the announcement described as “it’s like a museum in there. Literally, a warehouse full of treasures, souvenirs, clothing, jewelry, all kinds of stuff.”
“Sometimes, we would have between 300 to 400 people in here,” Tony said. “You can’t squeeze them together. They need space.”
Those tours and tour bus stops disappeared with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even today, government officials are trying to rekindle the Asian visitor traffic to pre-pandemic levels.
“It’s so amazing how a virus can shut down the world,” Tony said. “My children don’t have any interest in continuing the business, my wife passed away several years ago, and now, I get help from my brother, and an aunty. You can’t keep anything going with just three people. It’s time.”
Clifton said he estimates that the closing will take about a month to finalize.
In the meantime, the announcement said, “Venmo or Cash. There is no credit card set up since the pandemic.”
