Growing up in Hawai'i, before Statehood, I remember my sisters and I always wore Mary Janes, Keds tennis shoes, or Hush Puppies to primary and middle schools and special occasions. At home or play, we'd wear enclosed shoes, but our mother never allowed us to go barefoot or wear Japan imported rubber zoris AKA "rubba slippahs." I guess that our mother felt that wearing the rubber (zoris) slippers would cause us to have wide feet or what we locals refer to as "lū'au feet."
Thanks to Scott Hawai'i, formerly called the Scott Shoe Co., I started wearing their well-made rubber soles with nylon strap thong slippers during my high-school years. I was worried that the nylon Y-shaped strap would create a blister between my toes (it did not) and found the Scott slippers had a tiny arch support that made them sort of supportive. I was impressed with the quality and even felt good about how solidly manufactured they were because the straps couldn't even be pulled out. Over the past several decades, I've worn out my slippers and have always replaced them with ones from Scott Hawai'i, which I've bought from local retail stores.
While my brothers-in-law were visiting our islands, one of my in-laws asked me where to get Scott Hawai'i slippers. We went to several stores, but they either didn't have his size or didn't have the model he was looking for. So, I promised him to continue looking for what he wanted after we dropped him off at the airport for his return home. Yelp Hawai'i came to the rescue when I searched for Scott slippers; this location on Kona Street came up. Surprisingly, we've passed this location on numerous times because it's located in a building next to Snack Addicted and Purvé Donuts. I never thought of going here because I thought it was their warehouse location and not retail.
My husband and I took a chance to go in after reading previous reviews on Yelp and were met by a friendly young man. I asked if he handled retail sales or if this was just a warehouse/wholesale. He confirmed that he could help us and asked what we were looking for. After providing information about the men's size, sole color, and nylon strap, he walked down an aisle, reached into a bin, and brought out what we were looking for. He did say that there were other styles and color options but, my brother-in-law was quite specific about what he wanted. We asked the price and paid. While paying, he mentioned they could ship the slippers for FREE DOMESTIC LOCATIONS but, we chose to ship them ourselves because there were a couple of other things we needed to mail out.
It was a good thing we took the chance to go to this warehouse. We were able to get my brother-in-law a replacement pair of slippahs and wished that we had just gone there in the first place instead of roaming from store to store around town. read more