BUILD HAPPY

This year, the HPM Foundation has awarded $1,000 and $750 college scholarships to five recent high school graduates and two Hawaii Community College students to help with upcoming college expenses and support student success.

Some might call it the most pivotal day in the long, storied history of HPM Building Supply.

Sure, bosses will tell you how important their employees are to their companies. But in 1959, the year Hawaii became a state, HPM President and CEO Bobby Fujimoto decided to establish an employee profit-sharing plan.

Some of the company’s longest-serving owner-employees reflect back on what it is that makes them stay with the company as long as they have.

Tony Cann remembers very vividly that first day with HPM in 1984. Tony, then just 22, was excused early from his facility maintenance job at the Waimea store because his wife was giving birth to their third child at the Honokaa Hospital.

Construction continues to be an industry dominated by men. But at HPM, women are treated the same as their male counterparts and are given the same opportunities for advancement.

Diana Ancog’s fellow HPM owners who work in the Kona Branch’s Paint Department call her “boss” but the 15-year store veteran doesn’t necessarily view herself in the same way.

HPM Hilo Branch Manager Lacey Toledo started helping her father at construction sites in Waimea when she was just 12 years old.

The four branch managers of Maui’s Miyake-HPM stores say the recent merger of Miyake Concrete Accessories, Inc. with HPM Building Supply forms a good marriage that’s beneficial for both employees and customers.

HPM’s 100th Anniversary is a time to celebrate all the people that have played a part in shaping the history of HPM and our local communities.