A Blossoming Business

Hawaii Business Magazine:

The Hawaiian Lei Co., which went live in April 2005, was supposed to be a quiet little e-commerce business that stay-at-home mom Summer Campos could operate in her “spare” time. In other words, when her two young daughters were asleep. It may seem naive to think that a young mother could single-handedly send freshly made lei across the country and throughout the world, all from the comfort of her Hawaii Kai home office, during her kids’ naps and bedtimes.

But this is the Age of the Internet. And Summer, an accountant, and her husband, Carlos, a former executive at an information management company, had done their homework, spending nearly eight months studying the market and their products. The couple had conducted some serious research and development on preserving and packaging lei, creating a state-of-the-art inventory control system for their flowers and sweating out all the fine details of a comprehensive but user-friendly Web site for their original product line of 150 different lei. They also spent generously on an Internet marketing campaign.

When their business opened its virtual doors, nearly everything at the Hawaiian Lei Co. was outsourced, controlled by Summer and her home computer.

“We got six orders in the first week, and I was ecstatic, jumping up and down on my chair,” says Summer. “Then in the second week, it increased to 12 orders and then 18 the next. We thought, wow, this is awesome! Then all of a sudden, we were getting 10 orders a day. Then it was: ‘Uh-oh, now what?’”

“By the third week in May, I said: ‘Honey, I can’t keep up. You [Carlos] have to quit your job,’” says Summer. “We were turning away orders!”