Business View Magazine | April/May 2022

43 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4 HPM BUI LDING SUPPLY for everyone.” Hawaii is currently in its fifth consecutive year of population decline. That’s a key metric in terms of the health of an economy. A lot of the workforce are leaving because the cost of living is too expensive. “Every business is having to deal with the labor shortage situation,” says Fujimoto, “so obviously we want to take care of the employees we have and supplement them with technology and other tools to allow them to do more in less time and with less people. One project we’re looking at is changing out all our shelf labels with digital tags, which will take away a huge, time-consuming manual task and let staff spend more time with customers and doing higher-value tasks.” When it comes to growth, HPM is looking to deploy their products and services more evenly across all islands. They view their component manufacturing business as a facet of the company they especially want to expand and (Left to right) Mike Fujimoto, Bobby Fujimoto, and Jason Fujimoto, three out of five generations of HPM’s leadership HPM builds micro-shelters for those displaced by the Kilauea eruption in 2018. This provides inspiration for HalePlus, HPM’s initiative to produce factory-built modular homes designed to meet Hawaii’s affordable housing crisis.