Several Hawaiʻi businesses share the benefits and challenges of working with family.
Andrew Min of Min Plastics talked with Pacific Business News about how he grew up around the family business but never thought he'd be where he is now.
“It wasn't on my radar that I would run the company," he said.
The materials distributor was founded by his grandfather almost 75 years ago. “One of the things that I appreciate is being able to eat lunch with my parents," he said.
Another family business employee, Candice Ishikawa, works with her husband at Aloha Beer. The brewery was founded in 2010 by her father, Steve Sombrero. She said she never thought, "I'm going to grow up and run a beer company."
But now that she is, she loves what she does.
For fourth-generation Servco Pacific leader Emily Fukunaga, her father encouraged her to forge her own path — and work outside of Hawaiʻi to gain experience.
She followed her dad’s advice but eventually returned home with a better understanding of her own capabilities.
“I always had this inkling that I wanted to be involved with what my family was building," she said.
House of Finance’s Clarice Casamina said that growing up, the home mortgage business her parents founded was like her family’s fifth sibling. While her parents were raising her, “they were starting this company and sacrificing everything to essentially fund a bank.”
“It really was a labor of love for everybody. The sacrifices were throughout all generations," she said.
