Sears is the big time, with a broad selection of merchandise befitting its status as one of the nation’s preeminent department stores. Chocolats, Mon Amour is a specialty shop, catering to well-heeled sweet tooths. They are stores of distinctly different
Sears is the big time, with a broad selection of merchandise befitting its status as one of the nation’s preeminent department stores. Chocolats, Mon Amour is a specialty shop, catering to well-heeled sweet tooths. They are stores of distinctly different pedigrees and markets as different as towels and eclairs, yet both are showing confidence in Kauai’s economy, and that’s a positive sign for the island’s economic outlook.
The recently unveiled expansion of Sears at Kukui Grove Center is especially encouraging. It’s one of 17 stores Sears, Roebuck and Co. is renovating this year nationally. In addition, 11 new stores opened this year, bringing to 860 the number of outlets in the U.S. As a leading U.S. retailer of apparel, home and automotive products and services, and with annual revenues of about $40 billion, Sears obviously knows its stuff. And presumably, that includes an ability to choose markets to hang its hat on markets with potential, both now and in the future. So Kaua’i can take the growth of Sears here into a 71,000-square-feet attraction as a show of faith by the company’s powers-that-be and a signal of promise for what lies down the road in the island’s economic growth.
A similar outlook, albeit on a much smaller scale, comes from the proprietors of Chocolats, Mon Amour. Of all the planet’s locales that might have a place to buy Belgium-made, world-renowned chocolate at $25 a pound, Kaua’i wouldn’t instantly leap to mind. Yet the rich confection is among the fare of the sweet-smelling shop at Kaua’i Village Shopping Center. It helps that the store’s owners are a couple who live half the year here and the other half in California, and who also once lived in France, where they were introduced to the exotic candy that is now flown once a week to the island from Europe. Still, it’s doubtful Kaua’i would have been chosen for such a unique candy emporium unless there was reason to think the tourism and local trade would be good for business.
Kauai’s economy has taken some serious hits this year. But there are some economic indicators on the plus side, too. These stores are two of them.
