There is nothing better than receiving photos from our customers and friends that show how Puinsai is representin’ globally.  We’ve only had our full web site up since January of ’09 and we have received a lot of great photos.  Please keep them coming!  We are actually working slowly towards a full site re-design and we want to have a section just for these photos because they keep us motivated.

Some of the photos make us laugh the same we laughed when we first started Puinsai back in 1994.  This is a brand that has a goal to spread the aloha globally but we also have a sense of humor.

Our friend, Makoa just got back from touring Europe and he sent in some funny photos including the two above.  Thanks Makoa!

You know your in Hawaii when you go to the airport and the bathroom signs have dudes in Aloha shirts on them.

Of course we also love when people send in photos of our future women’s pro surf team posing with their bodyguard.  In this case, Emmalani, Czar (Body Guard), and Mokihana from Hanalei, Kauai.

Puinsai is slowly building up steam globally and we recently shipped some tees to the Tim and his daughters in South Shields, England.  Yes mate, they do surf in England.

Please keep the images and the letters coming.  We just created a section of our Flickr Page dedicated to submissions from our Ohana (Family) around the world.  You can check out all of the photos featured here and many more by going to our Puinsai Flickr Page.

In 2008 we had our first photo shoot to create some images for our web site. Our tagline is “Spread the Aloha” and our goal for the shoot was to have our models be the embodiment of aloha.  Aloha is a strange concept to most of the world yet it is all around us.  A surfer girl walking in a metropolitan area on a cold night wearing only a bikini and carrying a surf board is also a strange concept.

The shoot was a blast and the models were great. Our friend Guillermo shot the images for us and we were his PA’s. You can see more of Guillermo’s work on Flickr under various monikers but Velvia333 is where he is at these days. We must note that Guillermo did some creative color correction and cropping on his stream but we are uploading straight images with little or no retouching.

We shot in LA in 3 different sessions over a weekend and we were very happy with what we shot. Sadly, my best friend and business partner in Puinsai, Keoni Lucas, was killed in a car accident about two months after we had this shoot. That would explain why we have been slow to move with releasing these images and developing our site.

You can view many of the untouched photos from our 2 day shoot on the Puinsai Flickr page here!

We will be doing more shoots in 2009 and our goal is to shoot a similar concept but in different places around the world. The world could use a little more Aloha. If you are interested in helping please let us know. We want to focus on urban areas where surfers might seem out of place. Paris, Berlin, Parts of Africa, and parts of Asia would be really fun to shoot.

Where the heck has Puinsai been?  Some of you might be new to our brand but for those of you who go back to the early nineties when we got started you know that we haven’t been the most aggressive company when it comes to marketing.  For the most part we just sold our tees and stickers to some select vendors and friends and left it at that.  We didn’t mind that we were hard to find.  Keoni and I always shared a vision of one day bringing the company to Los Angeles and launching our global marketing campaign from here.  We both felt that it would be a great launching pad especially since we both worked in the TV/Film Industry.  In 2006 we started to make this vision happen but we hit some road blocks along the way.  Here’s a brief recap:

• Legal Battle (2006): The first hurdle was fighting a two year legal battle with a party who was attempting to takeover our brand because they thought it was abandoned.  We decided to try and work it out on our own because we had never abandoned anything and we could prove it rather easily.  That was a mistake and we ended up going to court.  On the eve of the case we settled everything but it took forever and distracted us from our stateside launch.

• Production (2007): While the legal case was a huge bummer and occupied much of our time, Keoni and I were excited to get to work on locating new suppliers and crafting new designs.  Over a 13 month period we ran various sample runs and worked with three different printers and were deeply disappointed.  We still have yet to find a production house who delivers what we ask for and within a month of the target date they promise.  The reality is that while LA has a lot of resources for an apparel company, there are also a lot of very large brands and most of these printers cater to them so the smaller guys like us get shut out in both priority and quality.  We still have yet to identify a production house we want to grow with.

• Tragedy Strikes (2008): Despite all of the hurdles, Keoni and I persevered and were hard at work developing new designs and building our first ever Puinsai Online Store.  We were starting to make some progress by early March 2008 and the prospect of getting Puinsai on Al Gore’s internet was exciting for us.  We had a great photo shoot and were proud of what we were able to produce and the campaign we developed.  Sadly, on March 30th, Keoni was involved in a fatal car accident and our world came crashing down. I had never lost someone so close and so unexpectedly and it was devastating.  It still is. Keoni and I had been best friends for over 15 years and we shared many of the same dreams.  One of those shared dreams was building Puinsai in to a global brand with a mission of “Spreading the Aloha”.  The world could use a little more aloha.  For the rest of 2008 all development on Puinsai stopped.  After some deep reflection I felt a renewed sense of urgency to move ahead with Puinsai and honor Keoni.  It is going to be difficult without his help and the current economic climate is also a challenge but I know we can make this work with a little help from our friends.
  

So there you have it.  Puinsai was born in 1994 and despite all of the bumps along the road we are still here today.  We are sure to hit many more bumps along the way but we know that one day our brand will extend to areas of the globe we never thought we could reach.

Aloha world!  Yes…we know we are a bit late to this thing called the internet but we are on Hawaii time.  You know the saying: “Slow down cuz, this ain’t the mainland!”  Oh wait…we are in LA now and I guess it is.  We launched this blog which we are calling the “Spread Aloha” blog because apparently you are supposed to name your blog?  Who knew?  We want to use this blogspace to communicate with our Puinsai Ohana (Family) so we hope you will subscribe so we can keep you updated on what we are up to.  The fact is that we need all of you to help us spread the aloha.  Topics will be all over the map but they will all relate to Puinsai and spreading the aloha.