Charles named new CEO of Maui Divers Jewelers

David Charles, the new president and CEO of Maui Divers Jewelry, has a background of 25 years in luxury retail.

He was appointed by the board of directors of the partially employee-owned company last week, and the announcement was made Wednesday by Cliff Slater, one of Maui Divers’ founders.

Charles built his career with DFS Group, most recently as region president Pacific of DFS Group, overseeing divisions in Hawaii, Guam and Saipan.

“David is a successful leader with a track record of growing existing operations and securing new ventures,” Slater said in a statement. “He has the management experience, passion and innovative thinking to move this company forward.”

Charles moved his way up through various positions within DFS, working around the world starting in his native Sydney, then through Singapore and Hong Kong before coming to DFS in Hawaii five years ago.

His immediate goal at Maui Divers is to push ahead with the company’s manufacturing operation.

“There has been a resurgence in manufacturing in the U.S., and here we’ve got our own example,” Charles said. “We’re growing that side of the business.

“Manufacturing is taking up more of everything we do, and we’re looking at how we can do more of that.”

His work life started worlds away from retail.

In high school he was “very into architecture and design,” so “my very first job was as an architect’s assistant,” at age 18, he said.

He’d gone straight into the workforce rather than to college, “but when the time came, I decided on business — marketing and finance for my degree,” Charles said.

He fully realizes the leadership role at Maui Divers Jewelry is a plum job that also carries with it a weighty responsibility, as the company’s legacy predates Hawaii statehood. There’s also the company’s global brand recognition.

While he is “excited,” it is also “a responsibility, I feel,” he said.

The iconic Hawaii company began in 1958 as Maui Divers of Hawaii and was first a dive tour operation in Lahaina started by the late business partners Jack Ackerman and John Stewart.

The discovery of black coral changed their focus and Maui Divers Jewelry was established in 1959, the year of Hawaii’s statehood. By 1962 the company had relocated its headquarters to Honolulu, where it has become the largest jewelry manufacturer in Hawaii and the largest maker of fine coral jewelry in the world, according to its website.

“There are many things I love,” Charles said. “It is an old Hawaiian company, it is local, and the fact that the product is created here, that the creation, curation and inspiration behind that is Hawaiian,” inspires him to lead the company to further successes, as have his predecessors.

Slater, who joined Ackerman and Stewart in the early 1960s, initially stepped down as chairman on Jan. 1, 1999, as a move toward his eventual retirement.

He was succeeded as CEO by company President Bob Taylor. Taylor led the company’s growth to 56 stores from five, and to 500 employees from 100 as of his retirement in 2011.

The company now has 39 stores in Hawaii and Guam and around 400 employees.

Taylor was succeeded by Executive Vice President Mary Beth Brenner, who left the company in 2014 for another job. That brought Slater out of retirement about a year ago to step back in as interim CEO until Charles’ appointment. Both Slater and Taylor remain on the board.

Charles lives in Kailua with his wife and two children, and all of them are paddlers.

“Paddling really has captivated all of us. … It wasn’t deliberately a family thing, but we’re all taken by it,” Charles said. His wife’s observations about the canoe “and what it means to be in the canoe, and the roles that all of us have,” draw parallels to the family, “but it’s also appropriate to take that philosophy and apply it to business in Hawaii,” he said.

Maui Divers and another iconic Hawaii company, Hilo Hattie, have a long history of doing business with one another, with Maui Divers and Pick-a-Pearl operations in Hilo Hattie stores on Nimitz Highway, Lahaina and Lihue.

In 2009 when Hilo Hattie declared bankruptcy, Maui Divers contemplated a $1 million bid to buy it out of bankruptcy, but later withdrew once Taylor was assured the garment retailer would thrive under its new leadership.

Hilo Hattie again filed for bankruptcy in February, but Charles said Wednesday he was not comfortable commenting on whether Maui Divers would have similar involvement this time around.

The new president and CEO has a “challenge” ahead of him, said retail analyst Stephany Sofos.

“It is an iconic company that is world-known, but over the years with the Internet and … more competition in particular from Asian markets … that can produce a similar product for less money,” Maui Divers must continually rebrand and rebuild itself into “something that everybody must have,” Sofos said.

Maui Divers’ website shows a great range of jewelry prices, from an 18-millimeter plumeria pendant in sterling silver at $45, up to $44,725 for a strand of South Seas white pearls with a white gold and diamond clasp.

“I think they can do it, because they have a great product,” Sofos said. “And Hawaii and Maui have magic names. Though they may get tarnished at times, they are still considered paradise on earth.”

People who can’t live here “still can have a piece of Hawaii, and that’s in the coral,” she said.