BRUCE ASATO / BASATO@STARADVERTISER.COM
Jonathan Chew holds a sample of the Dave Shoji t-shirt at the H-Zone at Stan Sheriff Center (formerly Rainbowtique).
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Chalk it up as another loss for the University of Hawaii athletic department. H-Zone, the UH sports logo wear and merchandising store, will close its doors when its lease at Ward Centre expires at the end of June. What was optimistically forecast as a $500,000-profit-per-year venture when launched three years ago clearly was oversold; in February 2016, the store was losing $40,000, and had seen only six months of monthly sales exceeding the break-even point. The struggling sales mirrored struggling football seasons in 2014 and 2015.
But while H-Zone won’t be in the zone for much longer — physically — it’ll live on in the digital zone, at H-Zoneonline.com.
Tourism authority takes on the Legislature
The fight between state Sen. Glenn Wakai and the Hawaii Tourism Authority is getting nasty. Wakai’s wife, Miki, a former HTA brand manager, resigned because of “very suspicious” activity at the agency, Wakai said. Rick Fried, HTA’s board chairman, demanded that Wakai produce the evidence or produce an apology.
That might be difficult. The HTA, already exempted from state sunshine laws, has guarded its secrets aggressively, attempting to withhold detailed budget records and “proprietary information” from lawmakers and the public, and clashing with inquisitive lawmakers over its practices. The HTA should remember whose money it is spending and who it is talking to — the public and their duly elected representatives.