Ben Franklin, celebrating its 60th anniversary, turned a niche into a million-dollar business

Brenda Freitas-Obregon is eagerly making preparations for the holiday season. She’s dreaming about turkeys, fall leaves and snowflakes as she designs fall and winter craft projects for Kalihi-Palama Public Library patrons.

Freitas-Obregon’s fascination with crafts began when she started working as a children’s librarian. An avid crafter, she makes stops each month to Ben Franklin stores around the island in search of interesting accents, pompoms, felt, foam and glue. She also picks up clay because it helps develop youngsters’ motor skills and is a key ingredient in one of her Thanksgiving crafts.

“Parents love handprint turkeys in their kids’ art projects,” she said.

“We do a lot of recycled projects since we don’t have a large budget at the library,” she said. “Kleenex boxes are transformed into a rainbow fish, brown paper bags are perfect for making brown bears, and toilet-paper rolls are flattened to make books.”

When parents said they wanted to make their own crafts, Freitas-Obregon expanded the program to include Monday night classes featuring projects such as making miniature scrapbooks.

When Freitas-Obregon isn’t teaching classes, she keeps up with her own projects, her favorites being paper crafting, card making, scrapbooking and sewing. “I go to Ben Franklin classes to get ideas, as well,” she added.

Ben Franklin Craft stores have been helping dedicated crafters like Freitas-Obregon find supplies for decades. Maui Varieties Ltd., the parent company of Ben Franklin, is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. The company also owns several Ace Hardware stores on the neighbor islands and the mainland. It all started when Shikano Kamitaki opened K. Kamitaki Store on Maui, selling underwear, kitchen needs, school supplies and toys to plantation workers.

Tadami Kamitaki and Masuko Mizoguchi, Shikano’s children, helped run the store, which eventually became Kahului Dry Goods, the forerunner to the first Ben Franklin Store in 1951. Faced with stiff competition from the larger retail chains that arrived in Hawaii, the stores found a niche in selling craft supplies. The family-run stores are now owned and operated by siblings Wayne Kamitaki, Guy Kamitaki and Lynn Ushijima along with cousin Paul Mizoguchi, Shikano’s grandchildren. They took over the company in 1975, turning it into a multimillion-dollar corporation with outlets on Oahu, Maui, Kauai and Hawaii island.

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Paa St., 833-3800 fer dozens of craft classes and demonstrations each month and sponsors the “Joy of Crafting” television show with Joy Shimabukuro on OC16.

CRAFTER Francine Kawakami, a legal secretary who lives in Kailua, enjoys paper crafts and scrapbooking, and teaches classes at a local scrapbook store. “It’s a social thing for me, and you can always learn something new,” she said.

People trying to save money during the holidays might want to start working on gifts now, she advised. For teacher gifts, she suggests taking a photo of a child and teacher together and painting or embellishing a frame to display it, or dressing up composition tablets.

“Altered clipboards make great gifts and only cost about $1.99. The clipboards can be decorated with pretty paper or pictures. It can be personalized with a theme or favorite colors,” Kawakami said. “There are hundreds of things you can do with a clipboard alone. The Internet is also a wonderful tool.”

Another gift idea is using card stock or paper and die cuts to make one-of-a-kind stationery.

“For older people, especially someone in a care home, make a bundle of eight handmade cards so they can send them to their loved ones,” she said.

“In this economy, more and more people are making handmade gifts.”