Hui Kapili Accelerator Feeds the Local Pipeline of Contractors

Plans, support and structure: For the people who build and remodel homes, all are important. And now, a new accelerator program called Hui Kapili mentors and supports small and medium-size construction-related companies, teeing them up for success and longevity.

The program is a partnership between American Savings Bank and Hawaii Home + Remodeling magazine, a sister publication of Hawaii Business. The inaugural cohort of 16 leaders from 10 businesses graduated in November 2024.

Accelerator’s Genesis 

The idea for the program took shape in 2024, says Cyd Rosa, publisher of Hawaii Home + Remodeling.

“I’d been having some interesting conversations with clients and people in the industry, and the general consensus was that after Covid, people started slowing down on their remodeling. Some of the businesses didn’t have the right know-how to continue to maintain their business. They knew what it took to build a house, but not
a business.”

Hui Kapili helps provide solutions to several vital challenges facing Hawai‘i, including a labor shortage, out-migration and a dearth of homes – especially affordable ones – notes Billy Pieper, senior VP and director of strategic partnerships at American Savings Bank.

“By equipping these businesses to flourish, they can then hire people in jobs with good-paying wages. These jobs, you can really make a living at them,” Pieper says. Growing these businesses, about 80% of which have been in business five to seven years, also creates a strong pipeline to make up for older businesses in the building industry that are sunsetting, he explains.

Additionally, having a ready pool of affordable contractors in the state makes it easier for residents to hire them for projects such as ADUs, aging-in-place remodels, and modifications that allow for multigenerational living.

Expert Advice

The accelerator’s hui met on Tuesdays for 10 weeks of classroom sessions, as well as one off-site team-building service project. For the service project, cohort participants built planter boxes for vegetable gardening at Paepae o He‘eia fishpond. “That’s how we started the program,” says Rosa, “everyone getting dirty, getting muddy, moving rocks, sawing wood.”

The weekly classes, which included help from subject matter experts, covered everything from marketing and employee safety to cash-flow worksheets and how to build company culture. Rosa gave an example: “A lot of people didn’t know how to take credit card payments so we talked about that.”

Speakers included seasoned building professionals, such as Nan Shin, who started Nan Inc. in 1990 as a young entrepreneur and has since grown it to become one of the state’s largest locally owned general contractors. “Nan, you cannot get him out to lunch or to golf,” says Rosa.

The first Hui Kapili cohort of general contractors met for 10 weeks to learn business skills needed to grow their businesses.

“He just works. But he came in and talked about what he’s learned.”

Among the other speakers were real estate teacher Abe Lee, who discussed sales, and Roseann Frietas, CEO of the Building Industry Association of Hawaii, who led a session on markups and margins. “David Hijirida of ProService came in to talk about what he had learned when he was (working at) Amazon; Stanford Carr spoke to the team about what his career is like,” says Rosa.

Tiffanie Gardner, general manager of Top Priority, a custom fabricator and installer of countertops and surfaces, was among the cohort members. “They hit it out of the park with this,” she says. “It was geared to the general contracting industry and you don’t see a lot of cohorts geared to our industry. We have organizations but before, nothing specific to drill down to learn how to grow in this environment in Hawai‘i.”

Gardner’s goal is to keep growing her company. “We went from $2 million a year to $7 million a year in the last three years and want to continue that trajectory,” she explains. “This was an especially good opportunity to work with the bank, learning about the lending environment. As we scale, we need to be more financially savvy. We learned about forecasting for a WIP, or Work In Progress, which I started to immediately insert into our business model.”

Of the 10 businesses invited, Gardner says, eight were general contractors and two were subcontractors. “Part of it for me was learning from my peers. How can we better address the needs of general contractors?”

Would she recommend the program to others?

“If I was a small general contracting business, I would run to this opportunity and I would attend again if there was a five-year plan! We really became advocates and friends and ‘ohana, and decided we have some advocacy work to do, with affordable housing and how to get a faster permitting process.”

Rosa says: “This group cares so much about the community. We’d sit and talk sometimes an extra hour about how to make a difference. They don’t want to let each other go. We’ve signed off on an alumni project for the cohort. They can share networks. They are in the same business and willing to get down and dirty and work together.”

From Pieper’s vantage, he already sees the accelerator working. For example, one participant aims to grow the business by leveraging American Savings Bank’s help with commercial credit, while others acquired new business leads. “There’s cross-company collaboration happening, business development happening. We want to help people scale with information, but also through tangible ways like providing access to credit and capital,” he says.

The program was such a success that the timeline for a second cohort has been moved from fall 2025 to earlier in the year, possibly during the second quarter. Applications are now being accepted. Interested businesses can apply at huikapili.com.