What You Can Expect When You Preorder

So youʻre interested in preordering from us? MAHALO!! We put so much love into our designs so we are honored that youʻre interested in bringing some into your own home.

As you may have heard or seen all of our designs are extremely limited!! We are a family run shop trying to not scale in ways that would ever compromise our ability to serve our current audience and customers. Because our focus in on everyone who shops with us and not just future shoppers, we try not to take on more products and projects than we can handle at a time. This usually results in our products selling out quickly and our store appearing empty for long periods of time. We apologize for this and are working tirelessly to try and fix this problem with every future release we do!

Occasionally we do preorders. Preorders are great because it gives you as a customer - the chance to get exactly what you want. It also allows you to shop without the pressure of knowing things are selling out in your cart before you even check out. The only downside to preorders is that we donʻt make the fabric until you order it. This means that from the time preorders close it can take up to 6 weeks for us to get your fabric, package it, and take it to post office. I know thatʻs a lot of time to wait for an order especially in this day and age! That is why I make sure that this is explicitly expressed in my product descriptions for preorders so that you know the time frame before you buy anything. Want to know why it takes so long?

These are the steps that your preorders go through:

  1. You place your order
  2. I close all preorders and start the meticulous process of organizing all the designs, fabric types, and quantities into one big simplified order
  3. I draft the order with my supplier and go over all the details
  4. I finalize the order with my supplier
  5. My supplier selects and preps the fabric for printing
  6. The fabric is printed in long continuous pieces
  7. The fabric is washed after the printing process to help clean and prep it for shipping
  8. The fabric is folded, packed, labeled, and shipped usually from China to Japan sometimes to Alaska to Tennessee then to California, before being flown to Hawaii. 
  9. I get the fabric. I check the quantities and the quality of it
  10. We organize the individual orders and start cutting the pieces for each order one by one.
  11. We package up all the pieces in the right boxes and put in the final touches of love and brand.
  12. We make shipping labels, attach them to the correct boxes and then take them to the post office.

Along with all those steps, I try to give myself a little wiggle room for unexpected events, because as we all learned in 2020 - there are many things that may affect us that are out of our control! If anything comes up I will be sure to let you know through social media and email.

So this is what you can expect from us if you preorder, but no matter if you order or preorder from us - your experience with our brand is so important to us! Youʻre willing to spend your hard earned money here?! We donʻt take that kind of trust lightly and we will do our best to make sure our products and intentions are clear every time we put something out. 

Thank you for your interest in our mission to change the worldʻs perspective of Hawaiian Language and Culture! If you ever have any questions please send them to kokua@kaulumaika.com so we can answer them.