‘All I want for Christmas is a job’

LIHUE — The Sports Authority and Pier 1 Imports are both hiring at least three more people to their staff for the holidays, and they’re not the only ones putting out “Help wanted” signs.

Island-wide, businesses have amped up their teams for the biggest shopping season of the year, and there are still plenty more companies on Kauai that are hiring.

“Many, many tenants, if not the majority, are looking for seasonal hires for the holidays,” said Wade Lord, who manages the Kukui Grove Shopping Center. “My sense is that it’s probably greater this year, given the low unemployment and the recent other retail store openings.”

Lord said working seasonal retail is a great start for young people, and he’s glad that kids have the opportunity to work for retail stores during their holiday break, if they choose.

“My two daughters are coming home for the holidays and they both have jobs waiting for them,” Lord said. “It’s a great place to learn customer service and basic business concepts, and dealing with people.”

Haley Bregere, manager at SoHa Living, a home décor and gift store in The Shops at Kukuiula in Koloa, said the store will be hiring three or four people for the holiday season.

“We always hire extra people for the holidays and we start the positions as early as October,” said Brooke Watson, owner of SoHa Living. “We get very busy starting in early November and it usually lasts through the end of January.”

Watson said the customer volume at her stores increase about 30 percent throughout the holiday season.

Shawn Garcia, owner of Java Kai in Kapaa, said he’s in the market for a few more employees.

“(Our busiest time of the year) really starts Christmas Eve and it lasts until mid-January,” Garcia said. “We’ve already added a prep cook and baristas and we’re looking for more.”

Garcia said he brings his new employees on-board in November so he has a month to train them before the last few weeks of December.

“Those first two weeks of December are always the slowest weeks of the entire year, and then the last two weeks are always the busiest for us,” Garcia said. “We try to get everybody prepared for that because it’s super sleepy and then it gets crazy.”

Garcia said the upside to the busy time of the year is that customers are usually in a good mood and employees usually garner bigger tips.

Nationwide, GameStop plans to increase their holiday help by about 12 percent from what was needed last year. On Kauai, GameStop has already completed its holiday hiring and seven members have been added to the team. Last year, the Kauai GameStop hired four people for the holiday season.

Nationally, Wal-Mart will be bringing on 60,000 holiday workers, which is the same number as last year. In Hawaii, the company is hiring 150 associates for the holiday season, according to Scott Markley senior manager of national media relations for Wal-Mart. Markley did not have the number of employees the Kauai Wal-Mart is hiring for this season.

“We are hiring for jobs across the store, with a focus on those jobs that will help customers during the peak shopping times, including cashiers, stockers and sales associates,” Markley said.

While holiday seasonal work usually only lasts until February at the latest, many businesses on Kauai said that their seasonal help usually remains on staff after the holidays pass.

“In addition to the chance to earn extra money for the holidays, we know these positions can lead to much more,” Markley said. “Last year, more than half of our seasonal associates stayed with the company in a permanent role following the holidays.”

Bregere said that the folks who get hired on at SoHa Living will also have the chance to stay with the company throughout the rest of the year.

“It’s so transient here that you lose people often, so it usually works out that people stay on-board,” Garcia said. “Usually it works out that we don’t have to lay anybody off.”