Always in the Neighborhood
The siblings running City Mill share their secrets for success
By Marie Tutko

Siblings Steven Ai and Carol Ai May moved local hardware company City Mill into a new era since they took over as President and Vice President in the early nineties. Photo by Olivier Koning, Hawaii Business Magazine.

My father always insisted, much to my mother’s dismay, that any home improvement job or repair work needed for our plantation era Waipahu home could be done with his own hands. As a child I spent several afternoons with him in the lumberyard at the local City Mill, pouring over power tools, paint, and plywood as he planned his next project. As the years went by I left the islands for college, but when I returned nearly a decade later it was a comfort to see that City Mill was still here. The neighborhood hardware store has become a permanent edifice etched in the lives of Islanders for generations.

And it has been a fixture in the lives of Carol Ai May and her brother Steven Ai, who now serve as Vice President and President of this family-run business. Founded over a century ago by their grandfather Chun Kun Ai, the company began as a rice milling plant and later opened its flagship wholesale lumber store on Nimitz Highway in 1950, where the current administrative offices reside today. Over the years the company has endured and evolved despite several hardships‹the financial panic caused by the Great Depression and two fires that leveled the plant. “But for my grandfather, giving up was not an option,” says Steven. “We largely attribute his strong spirit to the company surviving after all these years.”

And in this new millennium, Carol and Steven have taken over the family legacy, leading this local company despite daunting circumstances and statistics.

According to Carol, only five percent of family-run businesses survive past the third generation. “That’s because people in that generation don’t experience as many of the hardships as their parents did. You grow up comfortably off of the success the first two generations created,” she says. “My father always warned us that it would be us that would make or break this company.”

And although their father David ran the company when they were growing up, both Carol and Steven never envisioned they would one day be in charge of their grandfather’s legacy. Steven pursued a degree in business and worked for large firms across the country, and Carol studied marketing and also went east to Manhattan. “As the younger Chinese daughter, not much was really expected of me,” she says. “I wasn’t pressured nearly as much as Steve was to be involved with the company.”

But in the early nineties, fate brought the siblings back to the Islands. Carol had returned with her husband and two young children and their father’s ailing health brought Steven back a couple of years later. “My father talked about selling the company, and I did not want that to happen,” Steven says. The brother and sisteduo felt that they could take City Mill to the next level.

And since 1992, they have expanded their presence in Oahu’s suburbs, opening new stores in Hawaii Kai, Mililani and Waianae. Revamping their merchandise and focusing their corporate culture around customer service, they have prevailed in the industry against a new challenge, “big box” stores in the islands such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot, which have caused family-run stores, especially in the hardware industry, to shut down all across America.

Carol and Steve insist that their dedication to their employees and clientele is what keeps them going. “Everyone who works here is genuinely very nice,” says Steven, who is on a first name basis with all the employees, from those in the accounting department to the delivery drivers. “There are also many opportunities for our people to advance here, and if you needed to talk someone, we’re accessible. That is something the larger stores can’t do.” All in the Family

Most people spend time with their siblings only during the holidays, and even then complain that they are driven mad. How hard is it then, really, to work with a family member? “

One plus is that we know each other so well, and we know how the other will react to things,” says Carol. “I immediately know what Steven is open to, and what he is definitely not.”

Steven whole-heartedly agrees, and they both say that they are really lucky because it usually isn’t easy to work with someone that you’ve known you’re entire life.

“It’s so easy for personal things from the past to come out during a disagreement,” says Carol. “But you can’t say things like ‘Mom always liked you better’ or ‘This is just like that time when.’ We’ve made a pact not to do things like that when we disagree.” The duo says that if anything, working together has brought them much closer.

They both insist that implementing the value of humility, which has been ingrained into them, is essential for a working relationship to be good. “I tell people that I work at City Mill; I don’t emphasize that I am the President of the company,” he says. Carol also stresses the lasting impression her grandfather has left on them. “He always told us that whenever you drink water, always remember the source. We have never forgotten that, and we try to build off of that everyday.”