Show provides spotlight for homegrown products

Some 100 new vendors will share their wares at this year’s Made in Hawaii Festival.

And for the first time, a trolley will provide free service between the festival and several Waikiki hotels.

New exhibitors include companies from Kaunakakai and Hoolehua on Molokai; Kula, Paia and Pukalani, on Maui; Anahola and Lawai, on Kauai; Honomu and Keaau, on Hawaii island; and several communities on Oahu. Those are just the new exhibitors’ hometowns. Veteran exhibitors also reflect the statewide population.

This year’s increase in vendors is larger than last year’s, said Amy Hammond, executive director of the festival, which is marking its 19th year. The show, produced by the Hawaii Industry Food Association and sponsored by First Hawaiian Bank, was created to showcase genuine Hawaii products.

Hammond has been heading up the event for about the past 15 years.

"I used to have to beg people" to exhibit, she said. Now it is not uncommon for there to be a waiting list. This year the event will have just fewer than 400 vendors.

As happens each year, before the festival opens to the public, it will open to wholesale buyers who can get products into stores in Hawaii, on the mainland and in the international market, as well as into military exchanges and commissaries.

About 2,000 local, national and international buyers are invited annually, "and this year we have a contingent coming from Canada." They are setting up meetings with exhibitors.

Many of this year’s new exhibitors from Maui are attending with help from the Maui Economic Development Council, Hammond said. The Maui group will share spaces, "which allows them to have more vendors," she said.

While not exactly its first time at the big show, it’s been four years since Maui-based Sweet Paradise Chocolatier Ltd. has been an exhibitor.

Owner and chocolatier Melanie Boudar lived on Oahu when she first set up shop at the Blaisdell Center event, but she has since moved to Maui, so attendance has been too costly in the intervening years. "We have to ship our displays, staff and temperature-sensitive product, plus ship the displays back," she said.

"We think the outer islands have wonderful made-in-Hawaii products, so are grateful (for) the support our county has provided, to give us an opportunity to show what we have."

Something has to happen for existing vendors to make way for new ones, which Hammond describes as vendors "graduating." 

"They’ve kind of gotten to the point where they have as many buyers as they can handle and don’t want to get any larger" or can’t increase their production capacity, she said.

Others might have strayed away from the requirement that at least 51 percent of its wholesale value is added in Hawaii, either through manufacture, assembly, fabrication or production, and organizers "closely scrutinize" products, as do fellow vendors, to help maintain the festival’s integrity, Hammond said.

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