Small businesses shine each year at Hawaiian Airlines’ Made In Maui County Festival

When Natasha Porreca was a child, she picked up a love for jewelry from her great-grandmother. But it wasn’t until picking up trash on Kā‘anapali Beach, and finding a couple of neat shells, that she began making her own jewelry with the “treasures.”

Her co-workers and customers at Leilani’s on the Beach restaurant saw the pieces Porreca wore to work and soon Porreca started making jewelry for them. She made a unique Maui-shaped bangle that was seen by a manager of the nearby Sand People retail store in Whaler’s Village.

“She asked my friend, ‘Where did you get your bangle from? That is beautiful’,” Porreca said. “And so she gave her my info.”

It led to Porreca starting her own business, Nani Shells, in 2012, and “I kind of blew up from there.”

On Friday and Saturday at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, Nani Shells will be just one of the more than 140 local small businesses showcasing and selling their merchandise at the 12th annual Hawaiian Airlines Made In Maui County Festival. 

On Friday afternoon, from 1:30 to 6 p.m., business owners have the opportunity to show their wares to about 2,000 wholesalers and shoppers in the “Buyers Preview and Exclusive Shopping Day” when tickets to enter are $36 per person.

On Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., the “Big Shopping Day” is open to everyone, and is expected to draw between 8,000 and 10,000 people. Tickets cost $9 per person.

Porreca is one of hundreds of businesses affected by the 2023 Lahaina wildfire, losing $30,000 in inventory and materials when the Sand People store on Front Street where she sold her jewelry was destroyed in the fire.

Porreca, who makes her jewelry on her outdoor lanai behind her ‘ohana unit home in Nāpili, believes the Made In Maui County Festival will be another large step in her continued recovery.

She explained that the fire “took a lot more than just the $30,000 because that account specifically at Sand People would pretty much pay my bills every month. So it’s an ongoing loss.”

Porreca said her best year was 2022 when her sales totaled about $100,000. Since the fire, her sales have dropped to about $70,000.

Porreca said she always thought about applying to be in the Made In Maui County Festival, but never did before this year because the event that is always on the first weekend of November had usually fallen on her birthday of Nov. 1. Today, she turns 36.

“Every single year the festival lands on my birthday and that’s usually my day off,” she said. “As a small business owner, you don’t get many days off. So my birthday is the day I celebrate.”

This year, Porreca added, “I saw that it was the weekend after and I said, ‘OK, this is my time. I’m going to try it out.’ I applied, sent in a bunch of photos, and I got in.”

It’s not easy to get into the festival. More than 500 small businesses apply each year, with only about 140 selected. The vendors must have 51% or more of the value of their products coming from Maui to even be considered. 

Over the 12 years of the event, more than 400 different Maui vendors have participated.

According to the Maui Chamber of Commerce, the event had 133 vendors last year, 34 of which were first-time vendors. They generated more than $730,420 in retail sales, and had more than 400 wholesale buyers and distributors attend, creating 80 new wholesale leads and 24 new wholesale accounts.

Over the first 11 years, the event has drawn a combined 101,000 attendees, generating more than $5.3 million in retail sales, and luring 3,948 wholesale buyers and distributors. 

The event has received $1.05 million in grant funding from Maui County during the first 11 years, and a $110,000 grant this year. It equates to a 410% return on investment for Maui County based on the retail sales numbers, according to the Maui Chamber of Commerce.

The event was born in 2014 when the county government and Maui Chamber of Commerce realized that Maui vendors applying to the Made In Hawai‘i Festival on O‘ahu were starting to get squeezed out. The O‘ahu event draws 70,000 to 80,000 every year at the Neal Blaisdell Arena.

“We realized we had enough vendors in Maui County to do our own Made In Maui County Festival,” said Pamela Tumpap, president of the Maui Chamber of Commerce for the past 17 years. “Across the globe people love truly locally made and we have such phenomenal local makers here and artisans and crafters — across the board.

“So the idea was to … really promote shop small, shop local, buy truly locally made products.”

Tumpap said the festival does not keep precise numbers on how many businesses affected by the Lahaina wildfire participate, but Nani Shells is not the only one.

Some are in the same boat as Porreca — they didn’t lose a storefront, but they lost the places where they used to sell their wares.

Hula Cookies, run by 49-year-old owners Billy and Angie Bayer, lost two major distribution outlets for their cookies and ice cream cookies in the Lahaina wildfire: Foodland at 878 Front Street and Sunshine Market Maui at 626 Front Street. Both locations are still closed.

The company has a store in the Maui Harbor Shops and has been in the festival every year since the Bayers moved from Alaska to Maui to purchase the business in 2018 from Billy’s sister and brother-in-law, Tami and Jeff Caldwell. The Bayers run it as a family business, with their adult children Dina and Cobey on their six-person staff.

The Bayers’ first year, the business had about $250,000 in sales and this year they are on pace to top $1 million for the first time.

The Made In Maui County Festival has been a large reason for the growth, the Bayers said.

“It gives you an opportunity to meet all kinds of people who make stuff on Maui, that are trying to break into the business world,” Billy Bayer said. “And it puts them in front of the eyes of hundreds of other vendors that are looking to purchase their stuff. You get to collaborate.”

Angie Bayer said every small business on Maui or every first-time business should do it: “It’s been great for us.”

The Bayers got their two major outlets — ABC Stores and Foodland supermarkets — through contacts made at the festival. They now have more than 40 vendors who carry their ice cream sandwiches and cookies.

“You had to approach them separately until corporate was on board,” Angie Bayer said. “And then corporate would say, ‘We want them in every store.’ And they would call their managers and say, ‘put them in there.’ But you have to start out with one or two stores. The managers of those stores, the directors of those stores, come to the Made In Maui.”

Overall, Billy Bayer estimated that Hula Cookies lost “10 to 15 vendors” from the fire in Lahaina.

It was a big blow, but their business got a boost when regular Mainland visitors to Maui started ordering online from them immediately afterwards. The response overwhelmed Angie Bayer with emotion.

“There were so many people who are regular visitors to Maui who come and hit us up when, as soon as they get off the plane or as they’re leaving to get on the plane to go home,” Angie Bayer said. “So many of our Mainland supporters actually called and made orders. It was bigger than Christmas. In August and September, right after the fire, we had bigger online orders that year than we ever had.

“That was something that made me cry.”

The Bayers joined in the effort to feed the fire survivors in the Lahaina and Kula areas after the fires, providing thousands of cookies and ice cream cookie sandwiches to West Maui and Upcountry in the weeks after the fires.

“We lost count of how many we actually sent out,” Billy Bayer said. “We did our best to keep up with the demand.”

Now, the Bayers are in the process of increasing their business output. They are buying a warehouse facility in Kīhei, which will increase their space to produce their products from their current 400 square foot space next to their retail store to 1,350 square feet.

They hope the Made In Maui County Festival will give them the boost to help pay off the new space, which cost $625,000. They hope to have it ready to use by December and financed it with loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration and Bank of Hawai‘i.

“The Made In Maui County Festival is important to us every year, but this year with this investment, it is even more important to hopefully give us a bump in sales,” Billy Bayer said.

For some small business owners in Lahaina, the fire destroyed both their livelihood and their home.

Heather Herrera, owner of swimwear company Handmade by Heather, lost approximately $20,000 in inventory, materials and three sewing machines — one worth $4,000 — when her apartment on Lahainaluna Road burned in the fire.

Since the fire, she has been able to double her sales from about $10,000 per year to more than $20,000.

Herrera makes suits that cost from $60 to $120 from the ‘ohana unit in Nāpili where she now lives. She was in the Made In Maui County Festival for the first time last year.

“That was definitely the highest weekend of sales I’ve ever had,” said Herrera, who brought in nearly $2,000 in sales.

Herrera received a $10,000 cash grant from the Maui Pono Foundation, while friends and family helped her recover the rest of the funds needed to rekindle her business.

Her goal for the 2025 Made In Maui Festival is to have 300 swimsuits to sell. As of Friday, she has just over 200 ready to go. Friends from Maui are helping with the inventory work and her mom Cindy is flying in from California to help man her 10-by-10-foot booth at the festival.

Herrera, 35, hopes the event can boost her wholesale presence and her business to the point where she can make it a full-time pursuit and give up her job serving at Captain Jack’s restaurant in West Maui.

“My goal for Made In Maui every year is to get a wholesale account, try to get into those stores, go islandwide,” she said. “So that is my big purpose for the festival.”