LAHAINA >> Kim Ball — a member of Maui Mayor Richard Bissen’s advisory council who focuses on economic recovery — tries to celebrate “some of the wins” but knows that businesses continue to struggle six months after wildfires devastated Lahaina, Kula and the West Maui economy.

Ball owns five Hi-Tech Surf Sports stores on Maui where “we had a Christmas high, but in January business dropped off the end of the world,” he said. “It’s been a lot slower. We’ve got to prepare to tighten our buckle.”

It’s been a similar mixed bag as Ball talks to business owners around Maui and sees some hopeful indicators of a rebound.

A sign boasts of a new Bank of Hawaii branch and Fork and Salad restaurant to open at the Lahaina Cannery Mall.

Mala Ocean Tavern, where one of Ball’s sons just returned to work, reopened at a new site near the Lahaina Safeway, which survived the Aug. 8 wildfires.

“Our restaurants are doing good because people have to eat,” Ball said. “For West Maui, unless you’re in the food business, things are pretty tough. They’re getting by or barely getting by.”

Outside of the business community, Ball hears little sympathy for the plight of Maui businesses.

“My bucket is economic recovery but I feel like I’m in between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “West Maui doesn’t want to hear about economic recovery. They want to hear about housing.”

Gov. Josh Green told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “It’s tougher in the business community than some might think. I do think it’s going to be a long time before mom and pop businesses recover. I’ve talked to a lot of them that are still paying off loans.”

Several business owners told the Star-Advertiser that they appreciate financial assistance for fire survivors and new financial incentives for owners of short-term vacation rentals who convert their units to relocate evacuees from hotels into more permanent housing. But the business owners — many of whom have been denied financial aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Small Business Administration — wonder when they’ll get more government help to stabilize or restart their businesses.

Starting over

Dany White pays $900 a month toward her $150,000 COVID-era loan through the SBA.

Her approximately 1,600-square-foot Maui Memories store went up in flames inside the old Pioneer Inn on Wharf Street in Lahaina.

“I applied for FEMA and got denied, of course, like all other businesses, and they sent me to SBA but I already have a $150,000 loan for COVID,” White said.

Since she was both owner and an employee of Maui Memories, White was eligible for unemployment benefits.

“Unemployment is paying rent right now and I’m pretty much living on savings,” White said. “So I can’t wait to earn my money again.”

She also used $85,000 in savings to buy a smaller, existing store and inventory to open a new Maui Memories on March 1 along Hana Highway in Paia.

White signed the papers last week to take over the old Pineapple Beachwear store in the heart of Paia’s business district.

“It’s a clothing store, women’s dresses,” White said. “I’m going to put in T-shirts, too, and make it more like the one I used to own, with local art and jewelry.

“This is a lot of money on top of my SBA loan,” she said. “It’s very scary. But I love retail and I’m not giving up yet. I hope I made the right decision.”

Carlos Montano owns The Sun Spot boutique gallery in Kihei’s Azeka Shopping Center and has been waiting for weeks to hear whether his application for a Maui County business “Bridge Grant” has been approved.

Even if the grant comes through, Montano has no idea how much the amount will be.

“I’m still waiting on that bridge grant,” he said. “I called and — I don’t know who it was but — he said it would be about two weeks. After two weeks, I called again and he said it would be another two weeks and that was 2-1/2 weeks ago.”

At first, Montano said, he was told the amount of county grants would be either $10,000 or $20,000 then later “they said it would be anywhere between $1,000 to $10,000.”

So Montano has no idea whether his application for a county grant or a pending SBA loan application will help his business survive, let alone rehire the two employees he had to lay off as sales dropped and expenses mounted.

“Unfortunately I had to let them go and cut our hours significantly because there was no point sitting in the shop just wasting air conditioning,” Montano said. “Business is down. I’m behind on my rent quite substantially. Business used to be $250 to $1,200 a day. Now I’m doing $33 to $250.”

Montano has a side gig as a hair stylist that used to generate as much as $75,000 annually but has now fallen to $25,000 “because I had to cut that back. It’s just been a cavalcade of mishaps.”

Maui County has received 689 applications for its “Bridge Grant” program and awarded 127 as of Jan. 24 for businesses that generate up to $300,000 in revenue.

Debbie Cabebe, CEO of Maui Economic Opportunity, said in an email to the Star-Advertiser that, “We have received hundreds of applications for the Maui County Business Bridge Grant program from the island’s smallest businesses, some that were destroyed in the wildfires and others struggling to survive.

“Some of these small businesses have been our clients, whom we have assisted in getting started with business planning or microloans or with business and tax regulation compliance,” Cabebe wrote. “We have heard the stories of their struggles and those of others.

“More could be done to prioritize and help these small businesses in our community.

“The grants are going to a variety of needs, including supplies, equipment and marketing. We hope that the grants offer relief to business owners on their way to recovery.

“Our Business Development Center is getting grants out as quickly as they can, but the volume of applications and the customized review required for each application is time consuming and has slowed the processing.”

Then on Friday, Montano received a call “from the MEO folks who said, ‘There was something wrong with my paperwork because I do hair as well as run the shop and there was some problem with my tax return.’ So now I’m waiting on more paperwork to straighten it out. My level of frustration is that I’m thinking I’m going to lose my shop at this point.”

SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman told the Star-Advertiser on Friday that over 600 Maui small businesses have been approved for SBA loans worth over $103 million. Interest rates on SBA loans are as low as 4% over 30 years, she said.

Guzman encouraged businesses that have been denied loans to ask for “reconsiderations. Whether it’s tax documents or working to boost your credit score, we’re trying to be creative. We want to work with you.”

Applications will be accepted through May 10.

“This is a loan, not a grant,” Guzman said. “So clearly there are challenges. I feel for the small businesses.”

Making it work

Kent Untermann, founder and president of Coco Nene, a week ago opened its seventh store at Kihei Kalama Village — the fourth new store since the wildfires wiped out the Coco Nene flagship store on Front Street.

Coco Nene focuses on locally made products made on Oahu for “everything that goes into your home” and sells items created exclusively by Hawaii artists, Untermann said.

“Resort-focused tourists” comprise 80% of the business and Coco Nene has been able to keep paying its 60 employees because of “business interruption insurance,” Untermann said. “We’ve always had it and never had to use it. You don’t know how valuable it is until you need it.”

Untermann decided to expand Coco Nene stores to keep employees working and to help make up for the loss of revenue from its Front Street store “that burnt to the ground.”

The Front Street store, alone, generated $250,000 in sales a month, Untermann said.

The one-story, 3,000-square-foot, $12 million store dwarfed the new, upper-story, 500 square-foot store in Kalama Village that cost Coco Nene $150,000 to renovate using “some creative loans,” Untermann said.

Alone, sales at Kalama Village will not make up for the loss of revenue from the Front Street Coco Nene.

Untermann said that no other mile-long stretch in Hawaii generates as much revenue for small businesses like Front Street did.

“We were just one little piece of that,” he said. “It was our single most profitable store. The thing for small businesses is cash. If you don’t have cash you’re dead.”

Untermann encouraged his fellow Maui business owners to also take out business interruption loans.

For now, he said the post-fire experiences of Maui businesses have been “all over the map — from people recovering to people who are really struggling. I’m hearing everything from they’re going out of business to finding ways to make it work and everything in between.”

Private donations

Ululani’s Hawaiian Shave Ice lost its two stores and a warehouse on Front Street in the fire.

One of the stores was Ululani’s highest grossing shop.

Then on Jan. 31, David Yamashiro — Ululani’s co-founder and CEO — shuttered the Paia store for a variety of economic factors, leaving three survivors.

“We didn’t get any breaks when COVID happened and then the fires happened,” Yamashiro said. “We were paying full rent and business was sparse. Immediately after the fires, a lot of our shops had a 60% to 70% drop in business and that went on for a few months.”

A GoFundMe campaign raised $190,000 — in addition to $80,000 in direct contributions to Ululani’s.

The money went to employees still waiting for FEMA assistance and to help three other Maui families.

“We dispersed all of it to employees and the three families,” Yamashiro said. “The impact was pretty significant to the ones we helped.”

The donations helped fill the gap that Yamashiro and other Maui business owners believe has been lacking to help Maui businesses and their employees survive.

Six months after the Lahaina fire destroyed his Front Street stores and warehouse, Yamashiro said he also has yet to receive “$1’s worth of insurance.”

About those who donated, Yamashiro said, “They were a Godsend and their compassion and their willingness to give is tremendously appreciated by everyone. Our ability to help our employees would have been severely limited without the donations.”

Star-Advertiser reporter Allison Schaefers contributed to this report.