Caroline-Hawaii

a kama'aina family company in Hawai'i, is dedicated to producing high quality, exciting expos that offer the best in Island crafts and food. Caroline Hawaii takes pride in helping artisans do good business  selling expertly made, unique products to the loyal shoppers who come to the  Islandwide Crafts & Food Expos year after year by the tens of thousands.

Caroline Infante, owner of Caroline-Hawaii, began learning the trade in 1968 as a self-taught designer. She forged a successful career through the decades selling children's clothing, dolls and diaper bags every weekend at swap meets, craft fairs and trade shows, with her husband and four children working at her side. 

So it was a leap of faith when Infante applied to produce her first craft fair at the Blaisdell Center in Honolulu. She persuaded 175 of her fellow crafters to try this new show, in an indoor, trade show setting, and the 1st Islandwide Handcrafters Christmas Fair, as it was called then, opened its doors in 1987. The14,000 shoppers who attended proved that first show’s success, initiating Infante as a fair-director that Thanksgiving weekend.

Today, the two Islandwide Crafts & Food Expos held annually are among the most popular crafts showcases in the state, drawing up to 30,000 residents and tourists to see the 450 vendors in the Christmas show, and 17,000 customers to shop with over 200 exhibitors in the Spring show. The Islandwide Expos are cost-effective for exhibitors, with some of the lowest fees among shows at the Blaisdell Center, yet a commitment to publicizing every show well with ads in newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and posters across the islands. This year the Christmas show will expand for the first time beyond its original home in the Blaisdell Exhibition Hall to include the Blaisdell Arena.

And the Islandwide Crafts & Food Expos are a shopper's delight — held in the Blaisdell Center’s air-conditioned comfort, with hundreds of Hawaii’s top crafters under one roof, helping buyers select from thousands of exquisite, original and affordable handmade crafts, and food vendors with delicious offerings such as pasteles, fresh strawberry mochi and 10 different kinds of butter cookies. Free entertainment for the keiki is being added, with magic shows, face painting, and bouncing castles if room allows.

But the biggest sources of excitement are the free prize giveaways held at every Islandwide Crafts & Food Expo: at least three 32-inch Sony flat-screen TVs and a total of $10,000 in cash prizes! These great prizes are reserved for shoppers, to thank them for coming, for as Caroline Infante advises her exhibitors about customer relations: “We must treat them like royalty. We have no business without them.”