Sunday, August 30, 2009

Sewing and Shopping...the life of this Bag Maker!

When I haven't posted for over a week, you know I've been busy! I have been helping Menehune man in the yard in the mornings and then when he goes to work, I put my treadle to the metal!


Palm Palm over on Kauai has been selling my Kimono Keys like crazy. She said she sold 40 this week alone! So yesterday I whipped up another 37 to ship off to her tomorrow. Then she accidently sold a bag that had been special ordered, so I made a duplicate tonight to include in tomorrow's shipment.


I drove up mauka this week and bought a couple hundred coffee bags. It is a little over 60 miles round trip and makes for a long day. It is fun visiting the farms and chatting with the farmers to see what they are up to.


Dave and Trudy at Heavenly Hawaiian were nice enough to help me with sorting out 40 coffee bags. They are very supportive of my venture.


I also met some new friends at the Kona Pacific co-op. They had heard of my bags and were eager to sell me some of their to add to my collection of Kona Coffee Bags!


Karen and Lee over at Hula Daddy are becoming old friends! Their bag is very popular with my customers. It was nice seeing them again, too!


Tom Bong and Linda up at Bong Brothers are the furthest away on my route. They used to be married, once upon a time but now Linda has the store and Tom does the coffee. Linda's store is at Honaunau. She makes the best vegetarian wraps. I was getting hungry by the time I stopped in there and when I saw this vegie wrap I had to try it! It had tofu, shredded carrots, beets, lettuce and avocado wrapped in some sort of whole-grained tortilla or flatbread.


I also had to buy me some apple bananas and a great big mango from the front porch of the Bong Bros. store. If you are visiting the Big Island, head south, just past the Middle Keei Rd on the makai (ocean) side of the highway. Bong's store is a historic building where you will find some authentic aloha. Now, if I could just talk Tom into reordering his beautiful cardinal logo Bong Bros. coffee bag! I will keep working on him as I have for over a year now.


In the meantime, I think I have a better chance at having Linda print up her own logo of Bong Sistah's on some bags. That would be a fun one!


Something that some people don't know about my business plan is that I like that fact that I use authentic Kona Coffee bags. Yes, I could have my own printed up with "Sasaki Farms" or something similar on them as has been suggested, and in the long run it would save me some $$$...but that isn't my plan! I love the fact that I buy from working farms so that if someone buys one of my coffee sack totes or purses, they could actually come to Kona and go visit that coffee farm! And the variety of logos on the bags exemplifies the variety of people that own the farms. There are the lawyers who have moved over and bought land and became farmers. There are people who have grown up on this island and are doing what they know best. The one thing they all have in common is their enthusiasm for Kona coffee and love for this island that we all live on.

a hui hou

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