HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Tens of thousands of slippers at J-Slips Hawaii were damaged when recent Kona low flooding turned the property into a temporary lake, the company’s CEO said.
Martha Christensen, who has run the Laie-based business for 10 years, said floodwaters filled two shipping containers packed with inventory, leaving roughly 20,000 pairs of slippers covered in mud and dirty water. Many are now piled outside the containers in what she calls the “J-Slips mountain.”
“We are surrounded by streams. There’s a stream here and then in the back and on the side,” Christensen said. “The river was not flowing at all. It was a lake.”
She described how bins of sandals were swept across the property and onto neighboring land.
“It came past the second shelf. So probably four feet and the containers are probably just 15 inches off the ground,” Christensen said. “We had bins of sandals just floating. A lot of the bins were throughout the property in the next property. It was crazy.”
Christensen said the flooding has caused an estimated $200,000 in lost revenue, affecting online orders through Amazon, Walmart, and local retail sales across Hawaii, the outer islands, and Guam.
“I’ve been just telling them like, well, we got some that are dry, not all of them got wet,” she said. “Other orders, I was like, I’m going to be a little bit late on that.”
Cleaning and disinfecting the slippers has been slow, so Christensen is asking the community for help to restore the salvageable inventory. Volunteers can help clean, sort, and re-box the slippers, which will be sold at discounted prices or given to those in need.
Christensen said she’s planning for a cleanup/volunteer day on Saturday, April 11, at Maleka Farms in Laie.
For more information on volunteering or donating, you can email Martha@j-slips.com.
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