Business View Magazine | April/May 2022

41 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4 their HalePlus modular home system, HPM is working with HOPE Services to build 12 senior studios and one community center building using our modular program. This current build was inspired by the first project HPM did with HOPE Services back in 2018, when the Kīlauea Volcano erupted and the lava flow displaced scores of residents in the Puna district of the Big Island. Fujimoto recalls, “We worked with HOPE Services, using our component manufacturing, and we were able to erect many micro-shelters to provide a place to stay for all those who lost their homes. That was the inspiration for us and for them to realize we could do more than just put up temporary shelters, we can actually build permanent shelters. That was the genesis of this latest project that we hope to be opening formally soon.” Fujimoto has been with HPM since 2004 and has seen a lot of the company’s highs and lows – enjoying a huge building boom in 2006 and then facing the Great Recession in 2008 to 2010, when building permits dropped 80 percent and HPM’s sales volume was cut in half. He reports, “We had to go through a reduction in employees, as well, from 400 down to 200 and we basically had to keep the company on life support. After hitting near the bottom in 2010, it was really a HPM BUI LDING SUPPLY HPM Building Supply becomes truly statewide in 2020 by acquiring Miyake Concrete Accessories, Inc., adding 4 retail locations and 1 truss plant in Wailuku, Kihei, Makawao, Lahaina, and Waikapu. The grand opening and blessing of HPM’s Kanoelehua Avenue store on August 25, 1961