When Hersh Singer laid down roots in the islands 42 years ago as president of Maui Divers of Hawaii, he set out to find the best way to market the company’s jewelry.

To his chagrin, he discovered there was no company to turn to locally that could mine the type of data that he needed.

So two years later — after leaving Maui Divers — he started his own research and consulting business called Singer & Associates. Then five years after that — in 1986 — purchased a majority interest in SMS Research & Marketing Services Inc., better known as SMS, and became its chairman and president.

Now Singer, 74, is preparing to hand over the reins after 35 years with the Honolulu-based research and consulting company. SMS plans to announce today that Singer is retiring Dec. 1 and has sold ownership and management of the company to former Kailua native Tim Carson.

The 43-year old Carson will take over as president and CEO of SMS, and Singer, who is retiring as chairman and president, will remain as a senior adviser to ensure a smooth transition.

Jim Dannemiller, 78, president of the SMS Research division, recently retired. Faith Sereno Rex, president of the SMS Consulting division and Daniel Naho‘opi‘i, executive vice president in charge of tourism for the SMS Research division, will continue to be part of SMS’ executive committee.

Singer, who graduated from McGill University in Montreal with majors in marketing and international business, began his post-college career working in the marketing department in Toronto for Colgate-Palmolive Canada. He later traversed the world for the company in various executive positions over a 10-year period with stops in Brazil, New York, Germany and the United Kingdom before moving to Hawaii in 1979 to have a family life and take a position as president of Maui Divers of Hawaii.

“My basic education and training comes from Colgate-­Palmolive, and Colgate-­Palmolive is a packaged goods company producing salts and detergents and toothpaste,” Singer said. “In Colgate, one of the rules of life for a packaged goods company is you never do anything without first doing marketing research. You have to quantify the demand and identify what is the best product to fulfill the customer need and make a profit. When I came to Hawaii as president of Maui Divers, one of the first things I wanted to do was do a marketing study to identify what is the market potential for Maui Divers jewelry. There was no local company that we could hire. I had to go to New York to retain a company to undertake that study.”

When Singer left Maui Divers in 1981, he spent time talking to executives in the advertising and marketing industries and the financial area to find out what sources of intelligence or information they had available to make better business decisions.

“All of them indicated that there was very little outside of SMS,” Singer said. “At that point, I decided that’s an opportunity I didn’t want to pass up and I took advantage of it and got into the business.”

He sold Singer & Associates in 1986 when he became chairman, president and the majority owner of SMS, which had undergone multiple ownership changes since being founded by Maurice Meyers in 1960 as Survey Marketing Systems.

Even though SMS existed when Singer was at Maui Divers looking for marketing help, he said he sought assistance from New York because at that point in time SMS lacked expertise in the the type of marketing research that Maui Divers needed.

“We revitalized the company as SMS Research and Marketing Services in 1986 when I joined,” he said. “SMS, at that point, was much more of a public sector government type of agency where they did U.S. Census work, health-related work and other government services rather than private sector marketing research.

“We now have a lot of knowledge and experience in both doing public sector or government sector work as well as private sector, marketing research, political research, branding, strategic planning and other areas that SMS did not have back in the 1970s.”

SMS now does work in tourism and health care industries as well as planning, environmental and climate change sectors. Among the company’s key clients: the Hawaii Tourism Authority, Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Hawaii Department of Health.

SMS currently has 21 full-time employees and some 35 to 40 interviewers and part-time staff that undertake the data collection component of the company. Singer said no change in personnel is expected with the changeover.

Singer said Carson, who had been a Punahou classmate of his son, Roland, is a good fit for the staff and SMS clients. Carson had started his career working for U.S. Rep. Patsy T. Mink and U.S. Rep. Ed Case in Washington, D.C. where he gained a deep understanding and appreciation of research and evaluation.

Prior to joining SMS, Carson held management, sales, research and consulting roles in Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and responsibilities for the North American and Latin American markets for the last 16 years. This included working with tech companies such as IBM, RSA Archer and Edgile.

“Tim worked for SMS for two summers while he was going to Punahou,” Singer said. “So he got his hands very dirty and very deep at SMS when he was very young, and he has followed the SMS history since then. So it’s almost like a young man having gotten his hands dirty, going off to the mainland, educated, gained extensive business, sales, marketing and research experience, and coming back with his family to Hawaii to undertake the responsibility of managing SMS for the next two or three decades.”

Carson, who graduated from Punahou School in 1996 and holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon, said he’s looking forward to this new role.

“I look forward to working with the extremely talented SMS team to strategize and develop new products and services to meet the current and future challenges of our clients and the Hawai‘i community,” Carson said in a statement.

Singer said conducting surveys has changed dramatically over the years.

“It’s all done by telephone, and polling is quite different nowadays than it was 10 years ago,” Singer said. “We do random digit dialing and we dial cellphones as well as landlines, and today we dial 70% cellphones and about 30% landlines.

“In the old days when you registered to vote you had to include your phone number. Today, when you register you don’t have to include a phone number. So in the old days, polling companies like ours would buy the registered voter lists and utilize those phone numbers and randomly call the phone numbers on those lists. Nowadays, we actually have to use random phone numbers. It’s a little more difficult, more challenging, but the results are much more representative of what the voters will actually do on Election Day.”

Singer, who has been married to his wife Frances for 40 years, is looking forward to taking a step back from the business.

“I just feel it’s time to let the company go under a younger leadership, and with the team that we have at SMS, all of them very experienced, younger than I am, together with Tim they will be able to take the company to its next level while I go and help with the transition and try to relax more and spend more time with my family.”