Native Hawaiian owned. Making the paper Hawaiʻi uses every day, with a plan to make it here.
Hawaiʻi should make
what Hawaiʻi needs.
We started with the thing every household already buys.
It started with empty shelves.
Almost everything Hawaiʻi uses arrives by ship, most of it through a single harbor. Every storm, every disruption, the first two things gone are water and toilet paper. We decided at some point to stop waiting for someone else to fix that.
So we picked the least glamorous product we could think of — the one every household on every island already buys, every month, without thinking about it — and started there. Not a luxury good. Not a nice-to-have. The thing you cannot do without.
A Waiʻanae family business with a team that is all kanaka.
Kristen Hiʻilani Watanabe
Founder
Kris came out of operations business analysis and runs the business side — the numbers, the entity, the lenders, the routes. She is the one who reads the labels and asks what is actually in the thing.
Kaukaʻohu Wahilani
Co-Founder & Cultural Advisor
A homesteader in Waiʻanae. He will tell you this was never only about paper — it is about the ʻāina, and about the people who have always looked after it.
We import unbleached bamboo rolls and deliver them ourselves — our own routes across west-side Oʻahu, Honolulu and the Windward side, no carrier in between. That is Phase 1, and we say it plainly: it is not made in Hawaiʻi yet.
Converting equipment on island, so the rolls get made here instead of unloaded off a ship. Then growing the bamboo and kenaf here, so the fiber is Hawaiian too. Each phase is a real step, and we move to the next one when the numbers say we are ready — not before.
With locals rather than around them. Families growing the fiber on their own lots. Families earning by moving the product in their own community. Community groups with a fundraiser that actually works. One island at a time.
We say where we actually are. The product is imported today. We will not call it made in Hawaiʻi until it is.
We do not claim what we have not checked. No numbers on anyone else’s product, and nothing about ours we cannot show you.
The price is the price. $30 a pack, no introductory rate, no increase later.
We deliver it ourselves. Our routes, our truck, our neighbors. If something goes wrong you are talking to the people who packed it.
The $30 ʻOhana Starter Pack funds the converting machines that bring Phase 2 to life.
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