Small Business: Hawaiian founder builds vibrant Kerikeri brand with Kaleo

Kaleo is a Kerikeri-based business that sells clothing inspired by Hawaiian shirts, but with a uniquely Kiwi flare.

Christine Makaweo, founder of Kaleo, talks to Tom Raynel about making Kerikeri home, and the switch from real estate to fashion design. Each Monday, we interview a small business owner, which is now a regular feature of NZME’s editorial campaign On The Up, showcasing uplifting stories of success, inspiration and possibilities.

What is Kaleo?

Kaleo means “to express” in Hawaiian, and that’s our purpose – a New Zealand clothing brand blending my Pacific roots with the beauty, culture and NZ art that surrounds us. We collaborate with talented local designers to create limited-edition prints, from coastal motifs to iconic local imagery, and turn them into wearable art you can live in.

We have a lovely brick and mortar store in Kerikeri where we wanted to try out our products before we eventually made our way into the e-commerce side of things.

What inspired you to start the business?

I was born and raised in Hawaii. My parents immigrated to New Zealand 30 years ago to start their own business, and I’d been coming over those years. I had my career and my kid, and had been coming to visit once a year and loved it. I thought to myself that one day when I grow up, I’ll try to make the move as well.

I’ve always loved colourful, expressive “Aloha attire” [Hawaiian shirt], and when I moved to New Zealand seven years ago, right before Covid, I was inspired to reimagine that classic shirt style with NZ designs.

I was working on it in 2021-2022, and we were doing a lot of product development. We have a family-owned property up here and we had to get through resource consent and set up all of that. It was definitely challenging, and took me about one-and-a-half to two years between setting up the site and the business.

Christine Makaweo, founder of Kaleo Designs, spent most of her early life living in Hawaii.

I understand you work with local artists on the designs?

When we started working on the idea from home, I reached out to a couple of different artists and started working with them. It was just briefs and designs over the phone and over Zoom at that point.

What was really fantastic is people started to catch on to what we were doing. At first they thought we were just a clothing shop, then they thought it was just bright colours, and then they realised it was all local art.

A lot of our artists are not even graphic designers, some of them are carvers and painters, so they give it to us in various forms. We then digitise it, work with them, and then take it to the textile print that we can put into fabrics. Each print is a limited edition, and we always share in all of our packaging a little bit about the artist and the info behind the print.

Kaleo is a Kerikeri-based fashion business that sells clothing inspired by Hawaiian shirts, but with a uniquely Kiwi flare.

How are the shirts made?

We have a custom weave fabric made for us, and then we do a unique reverse printing process. Our T-shirts and hoodies are screen printed in our shop, and that’s something I learned how to do myself. It took about 10 months of product development just for our shirts.

Unfortunately, New Zealand is very challenging when it comes to spinning cloth and specific printing, we just don’t have the ability to do it here. We’d love to do more when those opportunities present themselves, but our men’s shirts are rotary screen printed and there’s a lot of challenges that come with that. That’s not to say it’s not still incredibly challenging dealing with the logistics of importing and supply chains.

Is the business self-funded, and are you growing?

Yes it is. I had a 25-year-long career in Hawaii in real estate, and I loved it. I really tried to put some pennies away for my next great adventure and so yes, it is self-funded and scarily so. The lesson I took from that career was that you do get a little bit of tougher skin. You really have to fight for everything and keep going. You’ve got slow moments and you’ve got busy moments and I think retail in New Zealand has certainly been challenging like that.

We started this business in the worst economic recession in 20 years, and we’re really happy to say we are making it and still growing and that we’re up year on year, so we are really grateful for that. We’ve had a lot of people approach us about wholesaling, and we do sell our golf shirts in some golf courses which is fun. We’d love to see ourselves maybe in Mount Maunganui or in Nelson in future.

Kaleo has one physical store in Kerikeri, a far north town in the picturesque Bay of Islands.

What would be your advice to other budding entrepreneurs wanting to start a business?

Focus on the wins and to be grateful for what you are establishing bit by bit. You can’t go out there and and gauge everything based on “oh that guy looks like he’s doing so great”.

You have to stay focused, you have to stay centred on what your point of difference is, and you have to keep trying to find the best way to state your market so that your customers resonate with it.

Do you have a small business story you want to share? Send your pitches to tom.raynel@nzme.co.nz.

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.