The Changing Face Of Sony

Sony Hawaii president Don Kim is busy increasing sales and hiring new employees for the company - and working to keep the Sony Open here in the lslands

Wednesday - January 11, 2006
By Chad Pata
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A Waialae Country Club member
since 1989, Sony Hawaii president
Don Kim has a 16 handicap and
says he hopes to play in the PGA
pro-am Monday

While the rest of company is still suffering from the “Sony shock” of three years ago, local resident and president of Sony Hawaii Don Kim has the business thriving here in the Islands and looks forward to the PGA tournament on Oahu this week bearing its name.

In the last year alone he has increased its sales by $70 million and hopes to grow that to $100 million this year. The rest of Sony is talking about closing a sixth of their factories and laying off more than 10,000 workers. Meanwhile, Kim is speaking of hiring more people locally as business expands.

“We have the best people here, it is the pride of the Hawaii people,” says Kim, who moved here as an administrator for Sony in 1972. “My management style is from the bottom up, they are all responsible for their areas. I just make the strategy and set the goals.”

The road to the presidency has been long for this South Korean native. Upon graduating from college he moved to Japan in 1970 to become the first Korean born employee of this fiercely Japanese company.

Two years later he came on vacation to Hawaii during Golden Week. From there, you have heard this story before: got off the plane, fell in love with the Islands …

“My boss told me to say ‘Hi’ to his friend with Sony Hawaii and I asked him ‘why don’t you use me over here?’,” remembers Kim of his one week visit that turned into a 33 year career.

Once appointed in November ’04, he saw their opportunity in the military markets. For the previous five years with the company, he had been in charge of the P/X sales and knew the opportunity inherent within them.

While Hawaii has always supplied the South Pacific, Guam and, oddly enough, parts of Europe with their Sony goods, he felt the continental U.S. bases’ needs were not being met to their full potential.

“To the Sony offices in the U,S,, the $40 million in sales to all the P/Xs is nothing considering that Best Buy alone is worth $1 billion in sales,” says Kim. “But to us, that is our biggest customer.”

In their first year taking over, they almost doubled the domestic military sales to $75 million.

“Because they are our No. 1 customer we are going to try really hard,” says Kim, who also credits his team’s knowledge of shipping logistics to their success. “We know what they like and we know how to talk to them, that is why we do it better than anyone else.”

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