Lifelong friends Meleana Estes and Noel Shaw never set out to start a business.
Three years ago, though, they launched HIE Heirlooms of Hawai‘i, a “modern fine jewelry collection created to perpetuate the tradition of Hawaiian heirloom jewelry — in particular, the inscribed gold Hawaiian bangle bracelet,” its website notes.
Heirloom bracelets date back to the Hawaiian monarchy. The future Queen Lili‘uokalani was pictured in a solid gold bracelet in the early 1860s, the HIE website notes, inspired by England’s Queen Victoria.
But the pair’s endeavors were inspired in part by their own heirlooms.
HIE got its start “after a decade-long search for bracelets for their children as special as the ones they’d been handed down,” the website states. “In the end, they decided to design their own custom versions, inspired by the bracelets owned by their female mentors and forebears.”
Estes and Shaw grew up together; their parents were old friends and high school classmates at Punahou School.
“I always sort of considered Noel and her siblings my Calabash cousins — like our cousins who were not blood related but really close friends,” Estes told Aloha State Daily. “And we were so lucky to have kids at the same time.”
Estes says that when she and Shaw were born, both of their mothers were gifted bracelets with their names on them.
“We would see our parents wearing these and we couldn’t wait to get them,” she says. “I got mine for my 16th birthday. I think Noel was the same.” It was a milestone and a moment in their childhoods, in becoming teenagers and becoming mothers, really, Estes says.
After they became mothers themselves, Estes said they had wondered about who made these bracelets in the style they wanted. Although there were jewelry companies in existence, they couldn’t find bracelets that looked like the ones their grandmothers had made for their mothers.
“It wasn’t so much of realizing there was a hole in the market, we realized there was a hole in what we wanted for ourselves.”
But a company was never the intention, Shaw says. The old family friends found themselves spending a lot of time together while watching their children, “sitting around and talking about the stories of our own bracelets that were on our arm and what we wanted to create for our children, the different bracelets in our families.”
Shaw says when they first started to make the bracelets, they were bracelets in honor of their kids, which took a while to get right. But after refining the product, it was something they wanted to share with other women “because we cared about it so much.”
“So we never intended to have a business, and then all of a sudden it worked out and it flowed and started to make a lot of sense … ,” she told ASD. “Weaved into our company, of course is growing a business, but is sharing stories, perpetuating, using this as a vehicle to support women in [the] community, so we gather a lot.”
HIE, which launched in February 2023, now offers a collection and variety of gold bracelets, necklaces, earrings and rings online at hiehawaii.com and in a handful of boutiques across the Islands, as well as monthly trunk shows.
How does it feel to be three years in?
“I think we’re ... so fortunate to be doing something we love,” Shaw says. “I think when you’re a child, your parents always tell you [to] find something you’re passionate about and it doesn’t feel like work at all. Then, especially when you get to work with people you love or dear friends and sharing stories [with] all the women we’ve connected with, I think it’s just very exciting."
Shaw says, too, that the rising price of gold is an “interesting challenge” for the jewelers, whose pieces are made of solid 14K, 18K or rose gold, but it’s a global issue in the luxury jewelry world.
“We get to bond with all of the other brands out there going through it and get a lot of advice from founders that have come before us. … We’re popped in the middle of a landmark industry change on the gold prices since we’ve launched in the last three years, and that’ll be a story we’ll tell our grandkids — how you pivot and plan.”
Despite the increased gold prices, however, Shaw says HIE won’t change its products, “because we really feel like it needs to be solid and it needs to be thick to last those generations.”
“We follow the guidelines of designing what we love, and we hope other people love it,” she continues. “It’s as simple as that.”
For her part, Estes says she also feels “super grateful,” and that the experience has been both “really, really fun” but also nerve-wracking trying to share heirloom jewelry “in the best way possible.”
An upcoming Kama‘āina Trunk Show will be held form 3 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5, in the Hale Hou room at Kaimana Beach Hotel. RSVP at rsvp@hiehawaii.com. HIE also will host a trunk show Feb. 13 to 16 at Island Copra within Kona Village, and Feb. 17 and 18 at GOOP at Mauna Lani.
You can also find HIE on Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
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Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
