Sheri Sakamoto joined Retail Merchants of Hawaii as its president in July with clear ideas about what she wanted to accomplish.
"I’m hoping I can help educate everyone about the impact that retailers make on our economy as a whole," Sakamoto said Tuesday. "I don’t think a lot of people understand that."
Sakamoto took over the post from Carol Pregill, who served for 13 years. The group’s new chairman, also since July, is Mark Storfer, who took over from Gayle Yamada.
Based in the IBM Building in Kakaako, Retail Merchants of Hawaii has 200 members representing about 2,000 storefronts.
Retailers in Hawaii overall number about 16,000 and employ about 200,000 people. They also generate the largest proportion of state general excise taxes — $2.4 billion.
Since 2004 Sakamoto has operated a consulting firm that helps companies with their communications strategies, but she’s been dialing that back a bit, she said, so she can focus more on Retail Merchants of Hawaii.
Sakamoto also worked 11 years as a deputy supervisorfor Los Angeles County, where, she said, she developed her passion for "helping build public-private partnerships with businesses."
She started with the county after earning a master’s degree in business administration from University of California, Los Angeles. She also earned three bachelor’s degrees — in psychology, sociology and business — from Loyola Marymount University.
Sakamoto said her move back to Hawaii in 2004 was motivated by her desire to give her son, who was "8 or 9" at the time, "a better environment to grow up in." Sakamoto herself grew up on Hawaii island; she graduated from Honokaa High School where her father was the principal. Her mother also worked for the state Department of Education, as a counselor and teacher.
"My parents really taught me well in terms of getting a better education," she said.
In 2005 Sakamoto was appointed to the Hawaii Judicial Section Commission by former state Sen. Bobby Bunda, and was its chairwoman from 2009 to 2011. She also has worked on various political campaigns, including as a director in former Gov. Linda Lingle’s U.S. Senate campaign.
Sakamoto, 45, is married to environmental engineer Eric Takamura, who has two sons from a previous marriage. Sakamoto said she and her husband now are "empty nesters" — if you don’t count their "two awesome dogs" — and live in Downtown Honolulu.
Question: So what’s up with Hawaii’s retailing sector? Is it healthy?
Answer: It’s getting better, and I think you’ll see, as the holidays come around, companies are really restrategizing how they market to the public. A key indicator is Kmart, which recently came out with their layaway program. They started actually marketing that to the public in September. So that kind of tells you the economy is only slowly picking up. The National Retail Federation predicted that there would only be a 3.9 percent increase in holiday sales nationwide. I think for Hawaii it’s going to be quite small, but we can definitely expect an increase in sales.
Q: In terms of restrategizing, have you noticed how retailers have been planning further and further ahead for the fall-winter holiday occasions? You know, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, even Veterans Day — it all kind of seems to blend together.
A: Yeah, I think for retailers it’s getting more difficult because of the online type of sales that we’re seeing now.
Q: I was going to ask you about that.
A: Yeah, you know, the sales aren’t just on the websites; they’re also anytime, anywhere, with mobile phones, iPads … It’s a huge digital divide between bricks and mortar and the new trend of the digital world.
Q: So how are retailers, to the extent that you’re aware of it, coping or dealing with this online shopping explosion? Have they reached an accommodation or still adjusting?
A: They’re still adjusting, and I think that is one of the things that I see at Retail Merchants of Hawaii that what we would like to do, is better help prepare our retailers in Hawaii for the onset of Amazon.com, Google.com — those big, large distribution-type of Internet retailers.
Q: Did you see that the Post Office just made a deal with Amazon for Sunday deliveries?
A: Yeah, I saw that. But, you know, they’re smart to do it.
Q: Who is — Amazon or the Post Office?
A: Both. (Laughter)
Q: What kinds of businesses do the retailers in Hawaii comprise? How would you break them down?
A: I would break them down anywhere from apparel to food to grocers, to large luxury. We have small businesses like T&C Surf Design, and then we have large companies we represent, such as DFS, Louis Vuitton, Neiman Marcus, Walmart, Nordstrom …
Q: All these companies, they’re all members of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, too, right?
A: They are.
Q: Is that sort of a problem that a lot of these businesses face — that they feel like they have to belong to all these different business groups?
A: No, I don’t think so. For the past two months I’ve been meeting a lot with my board members and asking them that same question. And for me it’s because I really want to find out, and if there’s a way that we can help them to not make a conflict, it would be better, because I see that the chamber and the retail merchants can work well together. They’re both very powerful, and they both affect, at the end of the day, what our retailers and what our businesses can and can not do. So, to me, it’s a matter of how we partner.
Q: It’s not just the chamber but also NFIB, Small Business Hawaii, …
A: There’s so many of them. (Laughter). But our mix is retail, so because we have a specific focus, I would say it’s much easier for us.
Q: Easier to do what — to make a case that they should belong to your group?
A: No, that we can help them grow their companies.
Q: What kinds of services do you offer your members?
A: We have a lot of different benefits. Right now we are redoing our benefit packages for our members. We offer them education and informational seminars every year, for which we bring in expert speakers. We also have a lot of information on the upcoming legislation that will affect their business, whether it can help them to grow or not grow, and how it affects them in general.
Q: Is there lobbying then?
A: We do a lot at the Legislature, yes.
Q: Would that be you?
A: Yes.
Q: In lobbying at the Legislature, what are some of the main goals and issues that concern you right now?
A: In the past we had the plastic bags issue; that was quite large for us.
Q: What was your position on that?
A: It’s hard for us because any type of fee or surcharge placed on a retailer also affects the consumer. But it also affects the business and how they provide a better service.
Q: So you guys tried to work out a mutually beneficial result?
A: Yes.
Q: Are you happy with the way it turned out? Although I guess that was before your time, in a way.
A: It was before my time, but personally speaking, I still think it’s very difficult for retail businesses. Right now for small businesses, large businesses here in Hawaii, there are so many regulations and restrictions and fees, I just can’t understand why there has to be so many regulations, and, you know, it’s impossible for them to survive.
Q: Do you have any specific suggestions to do anything about that?
A: Well, there was an e-waste bill last year that would place a fee, a surcharge fee, on retailers and manufacturers who sold products that plugged into the wall — any type of digital product. So that is one thing that I’m really focusing on, and looking at ways that we can become our own, perhaps, redemption center for our members.
Q: What do you think is the biggest cost of doing business in Hawaii for most retailers — labor, lease rent, taxes, inventory, shipping?
A: Oh gosh, all of the above.
Q: What are some of the biggest government-related burdens?
A: Taxes; we have a lot of TDI (temporary disability insurance); workers comp — those are a lot of fees that make it very, very difficult for businesses to survive, and in a lot of ways I think that’s why over the years we’ve seen so many small businesses here close, which is unfortunate.
Q: Have you ever taken a position on the general excise tax?
A: We haven’t, although we are the largest general excise tax provider to the state — $2.4 billion. And that’s why, to me, educating folks about why the industry is so critical to our community is really important.
Q: Would that include legislators?
A: Yes. (Laughter) You got it.
Q: What impact do you think Obamacare will have on Hawaii retailers, or is having?
A: I don’t think it’s going to be as huge an impact as it will have on the national-type of companies.
Q: Why?
A: Because we already have health care that covers almost every single person here in the state of Hawaii, so compared to national, I don’t think it will have a huge impact, but it will have some. As long as it increases the quality of care and helps lower the cost of health care and, you know, all those things, then I think it could be a positive thing.
Q: Are there any trends in retailing in Hawaii or in general that we ought to know about?
A: I do think that the digital divide thing is a huge thing and will continue to be a huge thing. … Right now there’s about 29 million people that receive coupons on their mobile phones, and the National Retail Federation is predicting it’s going to move up to 47 million. So if you can imagine that.
Q: But a lot of those coupons can be redeemed at brick-and-mortar stores, right?
A: Some can and some can’t.
Q: So they need to link it somehow.
A: Exactly. And if you think about it, that’s 1 in every 4 online shoppers. That’s quite a lot.
Q: Are there any growth areas for retailers in Hawaii? What’s booming at the moment?
A: There are a lot of different areas that are growing, but the one area that I really want to focus on is increasing enforcement for loss prevention … because we lose about $3 billion every year to theft and crime. It’s just unbelievable the amount of funding that we lose. But if we could just increase that kind of enforcement, it would help the industry as a whole.
Q: What would be the main thing you’d like to accomplish in the next Legislature, or do you just have a lot of things you want to get done?
A: There’s many things I want to get done, but I really want to make it a priority to let people know and understand and educate them about how the retail industry really impacts our economy.
Q: Do you think that educating people just generally will help, or do you have to say, no, we need to get rid of the Jones Act, or we need to replace the GET with something that’s not so pyramiding or whatever?
A: That is such a great question, and, you know, it’s hard to answer that because, to me, there are many factors that are involved. But from a legislative standpoint, yes, there are many of those type of factors that I would like to work on. There isn’t just one, there are many.
