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City Mill is a case study in niche marketing and overcoming the odds. The familyrun business has been serving Oahu residents for more than a century and in the process has become a Hawaii institution.
So it's no surprise that Carol Ai May, vice president and marketing manager of
City Mill Co. Ltd., is a finalist for PBN's Business Woman of the Year award.
May, who first joined the company in 1989 as a part-time employee, was
instrumental along with brother Steven, in guiding City Mill through some of its
toughest years in the 1990s as Hawaii's economy tanked and big-box superstores
made their first appearance here.
City Miff is one of the businesses that have not only survived, but thrived amid such competition. Today, the company's eight Oahu stores employ 450 and have annual sales of $55 million. Its 40,000-square-foot stores are about a third the size of the competitions.
"In the past decade City Mill has changed so much," May said. "During that time we've seen a lot of big-box competitors come in. We have been studying for a long time what would happen to smaller stores like ours on the mainland."
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