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Labor and Termites and Stock, OH MY! HOW ONE PLYWOOD MANUFACTURER IS ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF A HAWAII-BASED CABINET MAKER
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or Wick Rice, owner of 11,000-square foot Wick Rice Cabinetry, it was important to have a supplier who addressed one major problem going on in Hawaii. He found a solution with States Industries. Now, along with his predecessor Robert Malovic, who will be taking over as CEO next year, he is combating a new industry-wide challenge: the labor shortage. Something that many Hawaiian cabinet shops can agree on, including Rice, is that there’s a lot of money to be spent. “We’re on the big island where they have a lot of new money,” said Rice. “There are a lot of exclusive resorts and it’s really great for us. I ended up on a little island in the middle of the pacific where there’s just a ton of money.” “Building cabinets in Hawaii is a lot different than say if you were in Iowa, for example. Of course there are areas in Iowa with a lot of money, but here you’re dealing with a lot of money everywhere. These people are hiring very good architects and they’re building some pretty impressive projects. In fact, we’re working on a house right now that has eight bedrooms, eight baths and two media rooms.″ The company does a fair amount of work off island, but it’s the on-island projects that bring on unique challenges from loading containers and measurement, to navigating a complete shutdown due to COVID. A BIG PROBLEM ON THE BIG ISLAND “There are so many risks when working on island, said shop manager and future CEO Malovic. “A mistake can be harder to fix when it’s inner island because then you find yourself flying stuff back and forth. And if you need a measurement, you can’t just drive out to the jobsite.” Rice said that it got especially challenging during the pandemic due to his hesitance to fly at the time. “We had a job on Kauai and I wasn’t willing to get on an airplane, since no one was vaccinated. So, they had to measure the job for us. Communication was just so important.”
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