Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 9, Number 8, 1 August 1992 — Maui Gradeline sets up shop with OHA loan [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Maui Gradeline sets up shop with OHA loan

by Jeff Clark "I started from scratch and I learned as I went," says Robin Newhouse, Maui's only full-line supplier of surveying equipment. The wife of a surveyor, she began her own business selling surveying supplies in May 1987. Newhouse operated the business, Maui Gradeline, out of her Makawao home for the first four years while still holding a full-time job as a eook and raising her three children.

She was able to expand to a shop in 1991 with help from OHA's Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund. When she started, Newhouse supplied wood stakes exclusively. She would run raw lumber through a planer she had purchased on credit, sharpening points on the ends so the stakes could be stuck in the ground. Maui Gradeline is a sole proprietorship but the op>eration is truly a family affair. Robin's husband Steve helps out, and their three children also lend a hand, helping around the shop in the afternoons. Alayna (age 13), BillRylen (11) and Kimberly (9) empty the trash, sweep up and do other odd jobs. Newhouse gives Steve, who does surveying work for a major contractor, a lot of credit: "He's a big part of this. It was his idea. He said he couldn't see Hawaiians not getting anywhere so he said, 'It's time to make a statement, and you're going to go and do this on your own.'"

He helped her develop a business plan and showed her how to cut the wood for the stakes. "It wasn't easy. It was really hard, I used to get very frustrated at first, but I ean do it all myself now." Steve also helps with the jargon, Newhouse explained. "From a woman's point of view, I think the

paint I sell is 'pretty.' He goes, 'It's not "pretty," you don't tell a surveyor it's "pretty."' But it's pretty to me." The money originally used to get the business going and keep it alive eame out of the Newhouses' pocket. Later, their feeling was, "Now that it's stable, let's expand. Let's get an OHA

loan." Newhouse did better; she got two. After being turned down by more than one bank, she received a loan through OHA's Native H a w a i i a n R e v o 1 v i n g

Loan Fund in June 1990. With that $12,000, she was able to increase her inventory. A year later, having paid off the first loan, she received a second loan for

$14,000. It enabled Newhouse to open up a l,000-square-foot shop in warehouse space at 300 Hukilike St. in Kahului. "We had a bigger shipment of stakes coming that wouldn't fit into my garage," Newhouse remembers, so the move eame none too soon.

The storefront was all the impetus the business needed to take off, Newhouse says. "Just moving to the shop I got more customers, and that was just terrific because just doing business here for a year it almost doubled." Maui Gradeline first turned a profit

in 1991. "It holds its own," Newhouse says. "It's not gonna make me neh, but I'm not here to make a million." The business has evolved into Maui's only full-line surveying supply outlet. Now Newhouse carries transits, hand levels, tape measures, spray paint, road crew safety gear

such as orange flags and vests, barricade tape, boundary pipe, field notebooks, measuring wheels, all the surveying equipment you see on a eonstruction site — and, of course, all varieties of stakes.

"I ean get anything you want, really," said Newhouse, who counts among her clients the state, the eounty, private contractors, land surveyors, engineering companies and construction workers. Newhouse is proud when she passes construction sites or road crews and sees her products in action. "I tell my kids, 'Look, look: that's all

Mommy's wood!' " The proprietor is quick to point out that success has not eome easily. Prior to working out of her shop, she made a lot of deliveries. She'd start at 5 a.m., hit all the job sites and then show up for her "regular" job at 7. And it's still not uneommon for her to

work on holidays. For Newhouse, there's one essential that makes the inspiration, ambition, loan money and business sense add up to success: "lots of hard work."

Still, outside forces ean sometimes throw a business person a curveball. Maui Gradeline has been having a tough year because of Mayor Linda Lingle's moratorium on the issuance of building permits. So Newhouse has had to be flexible and adapt, filling orders that in fatter times she might not have

accepted. Newhouse has advice for Hawaiians thinking about opening a business: "Do it, do it, deflnitely," she says. "There's nothing you ean lose. Give it your best shot and you never know. You just never know."

Newhouse also says the necessary planning, paperwork and details "seem very complicated, and I guess it is complicated at first, but onee you get in the groove of things ..." the business runs more smoothly. "Think, put your thinking on paper, then follow through step by step. You'd be surprised what you ean do."

Proprietor Robin Newhouse shows off some of her company's inventory inside her Kahului shop, whieh she was able to open with an OHA loan. Photo by Jeff Clark ,