Mālie Organics, the 21-year-old Kaua‘i-based beauty brand inspired by Hawai‘i's flora, continues to blossom.
Founded in 2004, Mālie — which founder Dana Roberts says, means calm, serene and tranquil — is still headquartered on the Garden Isle.
The company has recently expanded with a new shop at International Market Place in Waikīkī.
"Mālie is Hawai‘i's premier beauty brand," Roberts says. "We literally started the company out of our garage, in our kitchen, and grew one product at a time into over 175 products that make up our beautiful collection of products."
The brand offers body care and skin care items, soaps, shampoos and conditioners, home ambiance products and more in scents like mango nectar, plumeria, koke‘e, pikake and tiare.
Roberts originally hails from California and recently told Aloha State Daily that her entrepreneurial journey first began when she and her husband, Shaun, created a company that sold a line of Earth-friendly commercial and industrial cleaning products to the likes of port authorities, municipalities and school districts.
The company expanded, but when she became pregnant with her daughter, Roberts says the couple decided they wanted to move to Hawai‘i to be closer to nature and the environment, and away from Southern California, "where we felt like there was a lot of consumerism and we wanted to raise our children in an environment that wasn't as focused on that lifestyle."
"We then sold the rights to that company and created Mālie," she continued. "When we first moved to Hawai‘i, we really wanted to use chemistry and formulation to create a new range of products using Hawai‘i's bounty and really the uniqueness of Hawai‘i to share with the world."
Roberts says her husband had been coming to the Islands his entire life and the couple had been coming to Hawai‘i together for about six years before they made the move.
"When we came to Hawai‘i, we knew that we needed to develop something and create jobs and opportunities and not take them," she says. "We were definitely planning on being entrepreneurs here to create opportunity. Since then — that was 21 years ago — we buy from about six suppliers throughout the entire state, we manufacture thousands of products right out of our Beauty Lab at Kilohana on the Garden Island of Kaua‘i, and, as you can see now, we are creating more jobs with our retail store expansion."
The company's Beauty Lab is located at Kilohana Plantation in Līhu‘e. There, they distill Hawaiian hydrosols and handcraft small batches of products, its website notes.
With its new location at International Market Place, Roberts says there are now four branded Mālie retail boutiques, including shops at The Royal Hawaiian hotel in Waikīkī, Ala Moana Center and The Shops at Kukui‘ula in Po‘ipū. A fifth retail location is expected to open at Kilohana Plantation before Thanksgiving, she says.
"When we think about our growth strategy and where we are today, what we've decided to do is really engage our customers directly where they are," Roberts says about the decision to open at IMP. "We want to touch our customers in an authentic way and give them personal experiences with the brand. We really feel like retail is an amazing way to do that, so we decided to open [in] International Market Place. I think that this shopping center is going through some transitions where really they're leaning in on more local companies and brands, and we decided that that would be a good fit for Mālie."
Here's what else Roberts had to say about running a small business in Hawai‘i, other things on the horizon and more.
What are some of the challenges and also some benefits to operating a small business in Hawai‘i?
One of the benefits to operating in Hawai‘i, of course, is that you can really establish long-term partnerships and relationships, and I think that those relationships really matter and grow over time.
The relationship, for example, with Kilohana Plantation, we grew our first flower farms there 21 years ago, and then it took 20 years to be able to set up our manufacturing facility there, and we're just now, after 21 years, being able to open our store there. But that relationship has been an important relationship in our lives for many years. I think one of the benefits [of] doing business in Hawai‘i is really being able to value long-term relationships.
One of the challenges in doing business in Hawai‘i is, I think, just being able to hire enough people. If you look at our team members at Mālie, the average team member has been with the company for over a decade. We have several employees that have been with us for over 20 years. I think that while Mālie has really thrived in maintaining our team members over the long haul, as we grow and expand, getting enough new team members is our most difficult challenge.
[Mālie currently has fewer than 30 employees.]
You mentioned opening a fifth retail location this year. What else is on the horizon for Mālie?
Next year, we'll be launching a new collection of products called 'Vanilla Rum.' This is going to be a little bit of a new direction for the company — that is it'll be a very male-centric collection of products. We're really going to lean into our very warm, sophisticated, musky aroma and we're really looking to create something that we think men are really going to enjoy.
What is your favorite part about what you do?
At this stage, Mālie is definitely a lifestyle for me. My favorite part of what I do is just being able to live the lifestyle that is Mālie. I've always really believed in a work-life balance, so being able to live my career in a way that I think honors being able to be parents, being able for my employees to be parents, to have that balance in our lives, where we can come to work and enjoy what we do and leave work and be who we are outside of work.
If your 2004 self saw you today, what would surprise them the most about where Mālie is?
I hate to sound pretentious, but I'm exactly where I expected to be. The plan all along was to have a small business that can possibly be a multi-generational business. Our goal was always to be small and to be individually owned — there's no shareholders in this business — and to possibly leave something that can be taken care of by the next generation.
My daughter [Jordan] is currently in the store working while I'm here doing this interview. She is definitely involved in the business on an everyday basis and learning new responsibilities everyday.
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Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
