I’ve been with Maui Divers Jewelry since 1962. We’ve gone through occasional hard times, but we’ve never had anything like this, where everything is out of our hands.
Hawaii made the decision to shut down on March 19th, and the next day, all 30 of our retail stores were shut down, along with everybody else.
You do what you can with online shopping, but if you’re in a multistore space, it’s no use opening up if you don’t have any customers. Other than our Honolulu business, more than 90% of the company’s revenue comes from tourism. Aside from our online business, we’re out of business currently. We had to furlough 300 employees.
If the government continues going down the current path, I don’t think anyone’s going to recover, and that goes for landlords, tenants, whatever. Because nobody can recover until we have tourism back. And we can’t have tourism back if we keep putting up roadblocks that tell visitors they are not welcome.
Cliff Slater
Chairman of Maui Divers, Hawaii’s largest jewelry retailer
#LetHawaiiWork
