Worries About Europe
Simply Wood Studios
932 Kapahulu Ave.
It’s rare to find a gallery on this side of the island that doesn’t use cooing Hawaiian music and the smell of bottled plumeria as tourist beacons. But Simply Wood Studios isn’t one of them. Humming with soft rock, the store is warm with studio lights and the color of hardwood in various geometries: wood clocks, wood tables, wood lanterns, wood card holders, wood sculptures in the shape of jazzmen, wood triangular ukuleles, and lots and lots of wood bowls.
Business was pretty good for owner Aaron Lau, 34, until Governor Linda Lingle announced last July that due to slumping tax revenue state workers would have to take pay cuts in the form of furloughs .
Suddenly, Lau’s gallery, Simply Wood Studios, took a dive. The 2-year-old Kapahulu business had been eking out a small profit through the early part of the recession, but after furloughs, profits fell to zero. Customers started buying small items as gifts for others, like $10 koa necklaces, instead of splurging on $7,000 hardwood love seats or intricate coffee tables for themselves. Local clientele dropped by about 10 percent. Of the past five months, Lau ended three in the red and broke even twice. Lau relied on his wholesale business selling $20- to $140-handcrafted pens to Neiman Marcus, Macy’s, and Japan, among other places, to float the rest of the gallery through the economic rough patch and support his wife and child.
“This gallery does not make a profit,” Lau says. “So if the gallery pays for itself, that’s good.”
Lau is a former investment and mortgage manager and approaches his 700-square-foot gallery with an unusually broad view. He saw the recession coming as early as 2002 when folks started coming to him with unreasonable loans, which he would not approve. He can rattle off GDP and labor market numbers and continues to diversify his business, with wholesale, tourist walk-in, and local sales. “Cautiously optimistic,” as he calls himself, the store owner worries about the effect of the European markets on the Hawaii economy.
“The recession is over for GDP. It’s not over for labor,” Lau says. “Hawaii always lags behind the rest in feeling the effects…. Europe is going to be a big deal.”
NEXT: Fantastic Waxing
