Hawaiian Shirt Manufacturing

Hawaii’s clothing manufacturers have been making Aloha shirts (aka Hawaiian shirts) in Hawaii since the 1930s. And although modern computer technology has greatly changed the way different designs are created, the actual manufacturing process today is not that different from how it was back then. It is still a labor intensive process that requires great skill at certain stages of production. We visited a local shirt maker in Honolulu to shoot some video of the various phases of the shirt manufacturing process.

That electric knife in the video is scary sharp. A few years ago, a worker at another manufacturer accidentally touched the blade while it was on and got a severe deep cut on his finger. After that incident, that company decided to move their cutting operations to a manufacturing-only location so only professional cutters would have access to the cutting area. Another manufacturer also hired a temporary cutter who made a slight error while cutting out one of the shirt parts and ruined the entire batch. That simple mistake wasted over $10K in fabric worth several times that in terms of lost revenue. Needless to say, it absolutely pays to have a highly skilled fabric cutter on the job.

The funnest part about doing this video was getting to dress up in Hawaiian shirt and dress to go shoot some video on the North  Shore and at a sports bar called Zenshu near Waikiki. It’s not like we really need any incentive to eat, drink and have fun, but it was especially fun to do it for a purpose!