Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 13, Number 2, 1 Pepeluali 1996 — A Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Report [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Report

Beating the odds with beads

by Pearl Leialoha Page "Tistory tells us that the early p'i European explorers traded beads to "^he natives they encountered. Today, one native is trading beads for a livelihood. Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund recipient Alethia Donathan, has been making a go of DACS Beads for four years and has managed to keep her Kalihi-based business profitable. "When we started, no one was selling specialty beads here," says Donathan. All the same, her friends thought she was nuts. Today she has a broad customer base that extends from Hawai'i to New Zealand, Guam and Australia. A bead hobbyist ean be pretty persistent in locating a source of unique beads, Donathan says. However, that doesn't

keep her from promoting her craft in bead workshops to kids, business professionals and seniors. "People are always looking for something to help them deal with stress. Onee I show them how easy it is to create their own jewelry or beadwork, they ean really get hooked," she said. Stocking more than 10,000 different kinds of beads, many from Czechoslovakia, India and Japan, Donathan feels both her selection and variety makes her a unique bead retailer. DACS Beads also stocks silk cordage, chains, clasps and beading tools and sells to jewelry manufacturers as well as hobbyists. Two classrooms in the back provide regular space for instruction in beginning stringing, bead jewelry making and bead sculpturing. Right now, the 29-year-old Donathan is teaching beading workshops

to kids weekly in a county-wide city parks program. The goal is to reach kids with the message that having a hobby ean be fun and inexpensive. However, starting up a business with little business experience and her own personal funds was challenging, stressful and finally rewarding. Alethia and her mom, Diana Nunotani, somewhat of a crafter herself but not in beadwork, decided to give it a go when a small inventory of beads was made available. "Mom did all of the bookkeeping, and I did the promotion and customer contact," she says. Six months into the venture, Diana succumbed suddenly to leukemia, leaving the business all up to her daughter. "I could have quit then, but I felt I had something I had to continued page 11

Alethia Donathan needed capital to expand her business, DACS Beads.

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prove — first to myself, that I could do it, and then to everyone else. There was a lot to learn that first year and I made a lot of mistakes, but I think I learned by them," Donathan says. By mid-1994, Donathan knew the business needed to grow. Even though she had been reinvesting every dime back into the business, there still wasn't enough to significantly expand her inventory and move to a larger, ground-floor location. That's when she learned about OHA's Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund. She applied for a loan. After a lengthy process of writing up a busi-

ness plan with assistance from Alu Like, she got it. As luek would have it the warehouse space just below her loft site at 1320 Kalani St. behind the old GEM Store in Kalihi became available just as the loan funds were released. It took her father, who's retired, and her husband, who toj)k a week off from his work at a wastewater treatment facility, just two and a half weeks to build out the space, learning carpentry from books along the way. Family and friends pitched in with the painting, and an electrician friend installed the electricity and air conditioning. "I moved the whole store into plaee in just one weekend," she says. "Our

speed really surprised people." In addition the funds went to increasing her inventory, purchasing a computerized inventory system, and producing a one-sheet color catalogue for her far-flung clients. "We're not having any trouble meeting the loan payments eaeh month," she says. And she's been able to pay herself a little eaeh month out of her business. "I'm not in [the bead business] it to make money. It doesn't make a lot of money. But if you show someone that they ean do something they didn't think they could do, that's very satisfying." DACS Beads ean be reached in Honolulu at 842-7714.