Wings Hawaii has been through a LOT over the years, and we wouldn't change a thing. Here, the OG trifecta (Sam, Melody, Becky) share their thoughts on some pivotal moments in Wings history.
2002 – Wings Hawaii is born!
Sam: I just really enjoyed making things for myself and friends. I remember not having a lot of money, but wanting cute clothes. I could afford a piece of fabric, or use an old tablecloth or curtain of my mom’s. The challenge was juggling school responsibilities, sailing team commitments, and finding time to make the shirts my friends were getting orders for. I tried to have fun in all aspects and not take any of it too seriously, because I knew it would take a lot of time and perseverance, so I might as well enjoy every step of the process.
Becky: We were in college at the University of Hawaii, and Sam would sew us cute tops that we would wear to class or concerts. Living on Oahu, we would go to the beach a lot and loved to pick shells. She took metal smithing classes and would make jewelry with shells we found.
At the time it seemed like surf, shell picking, nature, and art were my major inspirations. I’ve always loved drawing and anything hands-on and creative. That’s where Sam and I found a lot of our commonalities. When she learned to screen print in class, she was like, “Becky, we can totally print all of our drawings on clothes now!”
The biggest challenge back then was money. We started with just dollars in our pockets. It’s been grass-roots since day one. We started long before the internet was so accessible, cell phones were a common thing, and at least a decade before social media became mainstream. We hustled so hard to make our product and spread the word. Even today, some people think we are wealthy CEO’s who are far removed from the operations, but we are still very much the creators and work force behind the business. We have just gained a tremendous team of women to help us keep creating.
2005 – Wings Hawaii moves to Maui
Sam: Melody had moved to Maui and flights were so cheap I was visiting a ton. There were actual boutiques here in Paia, unlike on Oahu where it was not a thing yet, so it felt like there was space for me here. My first really consistent account was Alice in Hulaland -- this gave me a boost of confidence in selling Wings goods in a wholesale setting.
Becky: Melody was the first to move to Maui with her now husband Kesh. Sam followed shortly after. Prior to me moving, I would fly over from Oahu to help screen print, make products, and help out with any boutique parties or trunk sales we were hosting.
Melody: I was already living here at the time. There seemed to be so many more small business boutiques on Maui than on Oahu, in towns like Makawao and Paia, where our shop is now. This felt like a more natural fit than approaching the larger department stores and surf shops on Oahu.
2007 – The first Wings Hawaii shop opens in Haiku!
Becky: While Sam and Mel lived on Maui, I was on the Big Island to be with my family. I had been wearing a Lucky Necklace, a product we still make to this day. The saying goes: “Make a wish and mean it true, when this string breaks it will come to you.” I had wished to one day have a store of our very own. Three days after it broke, I got a phone call from Sam and Mel saying we had the opportunity to take over a storefront. It was an old, tiny weigh station for the Pauwela Cannery, built in the early 1900s during the pineapple plantation era in Hawaii when they still had railroads! They asked me, should we do it? And I said, “Yes!!!! My lucky necklace broke and that’s what I had wished for!”
Sam: I called up Becky and asked if she wanted to move over and have a real shop. She said that she had wished for it on her lucky necklace, which had just broken, so clearly, we had no choice. We had to do it. It was challenging, exciting, and one of the best times of life! We learned so much by opening our first store.
Melody: It was so exciting having our first real shop, and being able to hang out in our own cool space making things, and getting to make sales every day rather than the pop-up shop and craft fair hustle we were used to. I’m pretty sure all three of us would work there every day in that 400 square feet space. No one wanted to miss anything exciting!
Becky: Our first location in the weigh station was awesome. It was a perfect start to amazing things ahead. We did a lot of word-of-mouth promoting and handing out flyers to get our little shop on the map, because it was off the beaten path. It was tucked away from the average tourist, which made it such a hidden gem, and also a favorite convenient stop for locals.
2008 – Wings Hawaii is featured in Sports Illustrated Swim
Melody: OMG seeing OUR brand in print in a magazine was mind-blowing. Bragging rights, lol!
Sam: It was very validating, and there were a lot of great orders that came through for our ti leaf bangles with shells. We had a very rudimentary website, and at first we hadn’t realized that all of the bangle orders were directly related to the picture of Tori Praver (also a Maui girl) wearing our jewelry.
Becky: It was always exciting being featured in any publication, but Sports Illustrated was just next level. To have supermodels donning our jewelry?! It was so cool. It was just an accomplishment and proud moment to represent Maui like that in such a major magazine. I think it boosted our esteem in that our talents were recognized by something so professional.
2008 – We open our studio in Pauwela Cannery
Sam: This was incredible, because previously we only had 400 square feet to make and sell everything in. So now we had actual space to create. This changed everything and our potential to grow.
Melody: I remember wanting to set up a solid foundation for making our products before we went too big with the business. So we leased the warehouse and opened up the workshop. When our neighbor moved out, we took over her space and joined them together into one massive girls club house!
2009 – Wings moves to Paia!
Sam: Well, a lot of things changed at this time for Haiku. In prior years, there were not the same restrictions on short term rentals, so we would get a lot of European visitors who would stay within walking distance for a few months at a time, always patronizing our store and the cafe next door. With the loss of the transient population, the cafe had to shutter its doors, and consequently, our shop sales dropped. We started doing sample sales at our house in Kuau, and decided we needed to make a move if we were selling more in our garage than in our store.
Becky: After a couple years in the tiny space, we felt the need for more exposure. We owe a lot our success to our local following – they have contributed to our success the most, supporting all our events and many moves. So moving to Paia was a great way for our locals to still find us, but also to share our creations with visitors looking for something unique. Who doesn’t want to travel somewhere and get gifts and souvenirs made on island, and by people who live on island?
We were way ahead of the “Shop Local” scene that’s so prominent today. We were often criticized for hand-making everything, but we always maintained that we prefer to buy things of that nature ourselves, so why not share that with others?
Melody: The 2008 recession hit Maui hard. That, combined with the county cracking down on vacation rentals, turned Haiku into tumbleweeds and crickets. The cafe next door closed and our foot traffic slowed wayyyy down. It was obvious we had to take the leap of faith and move into Paia, where the real action was, or we weren't gonna make it much longer. Even though the shop was nowhere near the town center, it saw way more action than our Haiku store ever did.
2012 – Wings gets more press & gains real recognition
Melody: Super exciting seeing Wings get more press. In 2012, on a trip to New York to pitch Wings to magazines, we spotted a magazine on the actual newsstand that we were in. It was a tiny piece of jewelry styled into a shoot, but we were SO excited — it felt like we finally made it!
Sam: We had a really awesome customer who did PR marketing and she showed us a whole world of fashion we had known nothing about. We got the opportunity to talk to real NYC magazines and be seen in a real landscape. It was still really early in the handmade movement. So, making one of a kind items and producing our goods on Maui was still a hurdle in the eyes of many magazine editors. I remember being told that they were concerned because Hawaii-based companies were flaky in the past. I think things like that were hard to hear, but also the type of thing that makes you work harder and be that much more determined to prove them wrong.
2013 – New location again at 69 Hana Hwy, the old Quinsaat Building
Melody: Paia has a ton of visitors every day, but such a small percentage of them would walk far enough up Baldwin Ave to find our store, so this move was HUGE for us. After a few years on the fringe of town, we had the opportunity to move to Hana Highway, which is the main road that runs through our one-stop-light town. Every single person who drove to the north shore of Maui, or did the Road to Hana, would drive RIGHT past our doors. It was the cutest little building and would finally put us in the real action.
I worked at the fish market at the time, and after the restaurant closed one night, some of the guys I worked with came up to the shop and helped us load our jewelry case onto castors and wheel it down the sidewalk to the other side of town.
Sam: People would ask what our advertising budget was, and we would always laugh, because we didn't advertise or have a "budget" for anything. It's always been more of a "how much do we need to make today to cover costs." But we also took on a big move to Hana Highway, where we would actually be seen by all the visitors driving by. We moved into the cutest little dream of a building. It was a stand-alone spot right on the highway. We built little planter boxes outside, and were visible to so many people for the first time ever.
2016 – Wings Hawaii goes to Bali to establish clothing production
Melody: Business had picked up enough to show us that we could not sustain sewing ALL our clothing in-house. We allowed ourselves to be ok with some outsourcing. We chose a small, Indonesian woman-owned and operated sewing company (as opposed to a larger, Australian-owned factory).
Sam: We got an opportunity to participate in the Hawaii Pavilion at the Tokyo international Gift Show. Simultaneously, our good friend just came back from Bali with contact information for the most awesome woman who could do small batches of sewing and quotes for the sample pieces we sent with her. Since we were already going to be in Japan and so close to Bali, it was clearly a sign to go there and try it out!
2017- Melody's son Zealand is born! The best addition to the Wings Team yet! (since T-Bone)
2018 - 2021 Located in 90 Hana Highway
Sam: While it was awesome to be on Hana Highway, we were still a little bit out of the fray. After five years in our spot, we started to look at other options. We needed a little more space, better A/C, and to be closer to the center of town. Anthony's Coffee was a Paia staple, and with it being gone for a year, that made us keep looking at the space. It was a really big overhaul to make the space what it became, but it was a beautiful spot and served us well through a really trying and difficult time in the world.
2021 – Wings Hawaii moves into its current space
Melody: After Covid caused a major turnover of businesses in Paia, our dream space came up for lease in 2021, and that's where we shall be forever!
It was also a huge turning point when Becky rejoined the team, bringing the original trifecta back together. Sam's creative vision + our production team's ability to bring the designs to life + our bolstered clothing production + Becky in the shop as a brand ambassador, creating the merchandising/styling/vibe of the store + “location, location location” = we were ready to take things to the next level. This location has been insane since the day we opened – by far our best and busiest yet!
Sam: When I realized that this space was going to be open, I reached out to the realtors to find out if we might secure the location. It felt like time to move, only a few doors down, but a little closer to the best restaurant in town (Paia Fish Market) and between two other super awesome stores (Biasa Rose and Mele Ukulele). It feels so awesome to be in a location where we aren't looking for greener grass. The coolest thing is that the women who owned the previous store in this location for 30 years were two best friends who started by dying red dirt tees and made a successful locally-made business together, so it feels like we are carrying the torch on that legacy.
2021 Sam's daughter Isabelle is born right as the store opens!
Sam: I was literally doing construction and painting up until the day I went to the doctor and found out that I was going to be on bed rest and flown to Oahu to have an emergency C-section two months early. It was so hard to not be part of finishing and opening the store, but seeing my friends step in and take over all of the things that I would have been doing made me feel so supported during a super difficult time in my personal life. I remember watching the video Kat made of the final move with tears in my eyes. The shop looked perfect, and I was so proud of what we had done.
Melody: Sam creates a lot of the momentum behind big projects here, so when she left on emergency status to have her baby, Becky and I had to fill her shoes and press forward with the build out, merchandising, and opening of the new store. No small feat, but we pulled it off. From the day the doors opened, it's been our busiest location yet.
2025, to infinity and beyond…
Melody: We’re currently looking for the next level up, discussing how to continue our growth. We’ve got our largest clothing production yet in the works.
I don't know that there's anything I'd change or do differently, honestly. We haven't taken the easiest or most direct path to where we're at now, but we've learned so much and had so much fun along the way. I think that the hard times we've been through have also helped us develop the strength and determination (I guess grit would be the trendy term) it takes to run a small business. Especially a unique one like ours that focuses so much on sticking to our core value of handcrafting as many of our products here on island as we can.
Sam: Well, we have definitely not taken a linear path to where we are. There are things that have been harder lessons than I may have liked, but I do believe those are the things that build character and strength. The amount of customers that have reached out to us over the years to share how special what we make is to them has really inspired me along the way. The number of women who have chosen us to work with as a career for the past decade makes me more determined than ever to not let them down, and to continue to make our business better, more successful, and something that can support their growth with our company too.
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