BUILDING A

STRONGER HAWAI‘I, ONE HOME AT A TIME

What is a home? Jason Fujimoto ’98 has considered this question from more angles than the average person. As the fifth-generation CEO of HPM Building Supply, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2021, he has spent his entire life surrounded by the materials of home building. But HPM deals in far more than just metal, wood, and concrete. “Our vision is that everything we do as an organization helps our customers and our community build better and, ultimately, live better,” Jason explains. “We’re devoted to taking care of each other, and we strive to do what is right for future generations. That's our essence. We’re continuing the values and the leadership of all those people who came before me.”

Even before he joined the family business in 2005, Jason got an indelible lesson in the power of community when he enrolled at HPA. Born and raised in Hilo, he attended public elementary and middle school. His father, Mike Fujimoto ’70, attended HPA as a boarder and found the experience life-changing. “He was adamant that I would go to high school at HPA,” Jason recalls. When the time came, his parents supported the transition by moving to Waimea so that he could continue to live at home. It was a huge change nonetheless, but one that came with a deep investment from the school. “I had some very transformative and kind teachers who took me under their wings and helped me get through that first year,” he says. “All the teachers were super kind and caring. It really felt like an extended family – an ‘ohana.”

Jason excelled academically and, upon graduation, headed to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He got his degree in finance and management, adding a minor in psychology, influenced, in part, by his HPA cross country coach, Karl “Mad Dog” Honma. “I struggled significantly, but I stuck it out for all four years because of his encouragement,” Jason remembers. “Perseverance was a big life lesson that I took away from that.” While at HPA, he also took AP psychology and carried that interest with him to college, where it dovetailed well with his professional goals. As he notes, “Psychology and business go very well together –understanding human nature, biases, and how people think.”

A HANDS-ON HOMECOMING

After Wharton came a job at JP Morgan in New York, but after a few years, Jason and several colleagues began to get restless. They planned to launch a startup – until Mike Fujimoto caught wind of their brainstorming. “My dad came up with a proposition, saying ‘the one thing that you're missing is the understanding of how a company truly operates. Why don't you guys come to Hawai‘i and do a one-year consulting gig for HPM?’” None of the friends had ever been to Hawai‘i before, but all of them –understandably – leapt at the chance to get hands-on experience.

For Jason, the offer presented an additional opportunity. Though he had always been encouraged to go off on his own, he found that “it was really refreshing and meaningful, coming back and seeing with my own eyes what my dad and my grandfather and his grandfathers built over many decades. I reconnected with my roots.” Somewhat to his own surprise, when his friends left for other ventures, he decided to stay at HPM. “I think my dad was earnest in his offer,” he reflects now, “while at the same time having a glimmer of hope that if he could get me back to Hawai‘i, I might not leave again." For the first five years, he moved around the company, “getting into pretty much every area on a project basis.” Once it was clear he planned to stick around long-term, he entered a succession plan that began with running a location, then a region, then moving up to director of finance, CFO, COO, and finally, in 2019, taking over for his father as CEO, next in the long line of Fujimotos who have helmed the company.

STEADFAST FAMILY DEDICATION TO HAWAI‘I

That legacy began with Jason’s great-great-grandfather Kametaro Fujimoto, who came to Hawai‘i from Japan as a teenager and found work on a plantation. In 1921, he and a coworker named Sanzo Kawasaki left the plantation and, together with a group of local leaders, founded the town of Shinmachi – “New Town” – in Hilo. “Their goal was to build a thriving community,” Jason explains. “They set up a mini ecosystem of support and necessary businesses to keep this community thriving, including a lumber mill called Hawai‘i Planing Mill.”

Jason’s great-grandfather Barney guided HPM through World War II when the US Navy Seabees took it over under the War Powers Act. He also dealt with the aftermath of the 1946 tsunami caused by an earthquake in the Aleutian Islands that hit Hilo without warning. In Shinmachi, walls of water up to fifty feet destroyed the business district on Hilo’s Bayfront, including most of HPM’s main structure. Barney Fujimoto rebuilt and reinvented HPM as a supplier of hardware and building materials before the presidency shifted to his son, Bobby, after his death in 1950. A few years later, Bobby Fujimoto reinforced the company’s core values in a whole new way by establishing one of the first employee profit-sharing plans in Hawai‘i. He built on this commitment in 1977 by creating one of Hawai‘i’s first employee stock ownership plans (ESOP).

The company continued to grow and expand, becoming HPM Building Supply in 1983. In 1992, Mike Fujimoto became CEO; in 2006 he shifted HPM from majority family-owned to 100% employee-owned. “He felt that to really take the company to the next level, we had to go all-in on ownership,” says Jason. “It always goes back to our people and our team. When they act as owners of the company every day, every month, every year, it creates the strongest foundation for our future success and longevity.” Though the ESOP is nothing new, Jason believes it is also “the best model of capitalism now and into the future. We’re not creating an organization where you have one or two people at the top that are worth billions of dollars – we’re truly sharing the benefits.”

Reinvesting Across The Islands

HPM was in a strong position when the 2008 recession hit, but like so many others, it was forced to downsize in order to weather the storm, a painful reality for a company that cares so deeply about its employees. It has come back from the downturn determined not only to expand – over the last ten years, it has gone from being a primarily Hawai‘i Island-based business to one with 17 facilities and locations on all four major islands plus Washington state –but also to give even more back to the community.

The HPM Foundation has long been a source of grants and assistance on Hawai‘i Island, but as the company began to serve more and more communities, something more robust was needed. ”It takes a lot more planning and organization to make sure that our community giving is aligned with our values and that we're deploying the right level of resources across all islands,” Jason explains. The result is a multi-pronged Community Reinvestment Framework divided into five areas: housing and shelter, environment and sustainability, education and culture, health and wellness, and food security.

Currently, the two biggest areas of investment are education, including the Robert M. Fujimoto Memorial Scholarship at the University of Hawai‘i and the Building Future Builders Scholarship Program, which now aids higher education opportunities for both Hawai‘i high school seniors and community college carpentry programs on each island, and housing. “We participate in a lot of building initiatives across the state, including significant discounts on whatever materials are needed for the project,” says Jason. “Our partners have included Habitat for Humanity, HOPE Services in Pāhoa, and Pu‘uhonua O Wai‘anae on O‘ahu where they're trying to change an encampment into a place with real shelter.”

A NEW KIND OF HOUSING— FOR A THRIVING HAWAI‘I

HPM is also tackling Hawai‘i’s affordable housing crisis. The median home price across all islands is currently $1 million dollars, with Kaua‘i ending 2022 at $1.6 million. Jason is acutely aware that, as always, the future of the community and HPM are intricately intertwined. “We're in our fifth year or so of annual population declines,” he notes. The question, then, is: “What do we need to do to keep our local community here in the islands versus pricing them out of paradise? There are many parts of that equation – infrastructure, land use –but very simply, it's housing supply. If the housing demand exceeds your housing supply, your price will only go in one direction.”

To try to meet this challenge, HPM started a project a few years ago that makes use of its component manufacturing capabilities – wall panel systems, trusses, floor systems – to build the basic box of a home. Their goal is to partner with local developers and community-minded entities to create a sustainable system for providing a new kind of housing. “We want to offer really small, attainable, factory-built structures between 800-1200 square feet that someone can get into quickly, for $250,000 or less,” he explains. “That’s the gap in supply – smaller starter homes for younger families, or individuals, or people who just need shelter. We can help, but it takes more than just us to actually make it happen.” The hope is that by helping to fill this basic need, other good things will follow.

“If you have the right community with enough livable space for everyone, the benefit to everything around is so dramatic,” Jason says. “It impacts your healthcare system, stress, violence, everything. I believe that if we can continue to be innovative and do the right things for our community and our customers, this is the greatest vehicle to build generational wealth and success for our employees, their children, and hopefully, their grandchildren.”

It’s been twenty years since Jason returned from New York to Hilo, and he can’t imagine having done it differently. As the father of a 15-yearold daughter and a 12-year-old son, with a wife who also spent time on the continent before returning, Jason has built his own place in Hawai‘i while helping others do the same. “Home is your foundation,” he says. “It's where families are built. It's your anchor — and your heart.” •