Lifelong lamp man to close the door, turn out the lights

Toni’s Lamps & Shades at 1124 Kona St. is planning to close and is having a liquidation sale after some 58 years in business.

The business is owned by Edwin Iwaida, who bought the company from his boss in the 1960s. Iwaida kept Toni’s as the store’s name, and now Edwin is often called "Toni" by his customers.

"I go back to being Eddie in the evenings," he chuckled.

Iwaida is 82 and is finally going to retire, so this is not a story about a big company forcing out a small business.

Iwaida already survived that sort of scenario, when his was among some 100 small businesses evicted from Kee­au­moku Street properties after Haseko Hawaii Inc. bought a swath of land for a proposed "Superblock" development in 1991.

Toni’s Lamps & Shades relocated to its current spot at the corner of Kona and Kama­kee streets, and has been plying its unique trade to generations of families, the hotel industry and interior designers too numerous to count.

In addition to selling factory-made lighting fixtures, lamps, chandeliers and more, Iwaida has custom-made lamps, he repairs lamps and lampshades, and he has served kama­aina families of high net worth by cleaning chandeliers, crystal by crystal, for decades.

The oddest object he ever made into a lamp, Iwaida said, "was an old Army boot. The mother was sentimental," he smiled.

Cookie Schrader, a Toni’s customer, bought two beautiful lamps resembling bamboo at the swap meet, "two for $30," she beamed. She picked up the coordinating shades she had ordered from Iwaida on Tuesday morning with granddaughter Juliet in tow. She was clearly happy with the shades and planned to come back to the store solo so she could freely browse.

Iwaida and his daughter Emi helped select just the right finials to secure Schrader’s shades in place.

Emi Iwaida, formerly a buyer for the old McInerny retail stores, has returned to Hawaii from her home in New York, where she is a teacher, to help with the phasing out of the business.

"He’s like the Maytag man" of the old TV commercials, she observed. The premise behind the advertising was that the Maytag repairman was lonely because the company’s products were so good they never needed repair or replacement. "So, someone buys a lamp, and 30 years later they’ll come back to have him fix a small tear in the shade," she said.

The shop has equipment that will roll and spot-weld wire to make the frames for lamp shades, and special fabrics for covering the shades’ skeletons. He also has woodworking equipment that he has used in his business, to which wife Gertrude also has contributed her ceramic-making talents over the years.

Iwaida has received several inquiries about the shop equipment.

He also is trying to avoid taking on any more custom work, since the business could close as early as Dec. 15.

Father and daughter are working to liquidate as much inventory as possible, and there is a great deal of it, all at 60 percent off, before resorting to an auction.

For instance, Emi is looking for a taker for dozens of special-order ceramic lamp bases that the client never paid for or picked up.

Longtime family friend Jodi Yip Lee stopped by Tuesday and greeted customers, answered the phone and called Edwin "gung gung," which is Chinese for "grandfather." Her mother and Edwin met while ballroom dancing at the Ala Wai Clubhouse, she explained.

Inside the tightly packed showroom are lamps of all shapes, sizes, styles and colors, including stained-glass lamps, a large fishing float in rope netting waiting for a home and, suspended from the ceiling, a huge, smooth, spherical light fixture of amber-hued capiz shell.

Iwaida used to do quite a bit of business with the hotel industry, creating custom lamps for the Coco Palms on Kauai, the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Wai­kiki and others, but the business has changed, especially when it comes to addressing the large-scale needs of corporate-owned hotel chains and the like.

With fewer large clients in recent years, Iwaida’s bread-and-butter clients have been smaller, individual customers and interior designers who have raved about his service on Yelp.com, the online review site.

"We have a very good clientele," Iwaida said, adding, "I appreciate the customers" who have kept him in business.

Once the inventory is liquidated and Iwaida is officially retired, "I guess I’ll travel" and spend time with hanai grandchildren, he said.

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Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.