LeiManu Designs had its genesis in 1967, when Donald Namohala Yuen, working as Don Yuen Manufacturing, created the Malama Torch®️.
The unique “flaming kāhili” design torch grew out of a conversation between the manager of the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel and the manager of the Gas Company. They were looking for a unique lūʻau torch which would highlight the esthetic of the hotel, protect the flame, and evoke a sense of Hawaiian place. Don came up with the perfect design.
Leilehua, Don’s daughter grew up playing in the Makaʻala Street workshop where Don created Malama Torches®️ as well as other artwork. From massive sculptures to delicate jewelry, as well as watercolors and oil paintings, Don’s wide-ranging art frequently showed his love for his island home.
At first, Leilehua had no interest in following in her father’s footsteps, and pursued a career in journalism. However, the traditional Hawaiian value of “kuleana,” responsibility, drew Leilehua back to her roots. She feels a deep responsibility to the clientele her father serves, to providing quality hand-crafted products, and maintaining the strong tradition of craftsmanship inspired by her father. In returning to that kuleana, she found joy in continuing her father’s artistic legacy, as well as expanding on her own artistic endeavors. Leilehua’s great joy in art is using a variety of materials to express her visions of her island home.
In 2015 she curated an art show featuring the lighting of LeiManu Designs, and including a small retrospective of her Don’s work.
Manu Josiah, Leilehua’s husband and business partner, was the instigator in expanding the business. He developed the partnership to extend the reach of Leilehuaʻs lighting and sculpture designs and, as a consequence, dramatically enhanced profit margins for the business. Manu considers his greatest creative achievement to be working on and seeing to completion a pair of massive four-foot diameter copper chandeliers. This challenging sculptural lighting system was the largest and most complex job LeiManu Designs had as of 2015. It is currently being superseded by a set of some 20 sculptural tables he was commissioned to craft from a historic tree. Manu considers his biggest challenge to be looking for new ways to approach the art and industry of lighting.
Manu and Leilehua have continued to develop and expand the product line, handcrafting the original Malama Torch®️ as well as creating new designs and one-of-a-kind pieces. Their installations include private homes, resorts, restaurants, and shopping centers. In the cooperative Hawaiian style, LeiManu Designs works with other local lighting manufacturers to create a network of mutual support and provide the best possible solutions to clientsʻ lighting needs. Within the first five years that Manu and Leilehua operated the company, production and sales doubled.
Core Values of Leimanu Designs
The core values of LeiManu Designs reflect the company’s Hawaiian roots:
- Aloha – though to non-Hawaiians, this is a word most often associated with the tourist industry, it has deeper and much older connotations of trust, friendship, stewardship, and caring.
- Kuleana – responsibility to the community and to the traditions in which the community rests.
- Haʻahaʻa – humility, remembering the roots—human and cultural—from which we came.
- Laulima – working together toward a common goal.
- Aloha ʻĀina – cherishing the land and working to conserve, preserve, and restore it.
Our long-term plan is to create a business that promotes sustainable industry in Hilo and Hawaiʻi Island by providing a unique functional product, and to provide education on the benefits of well designed lighting for the environment, communities, individuals, and businesses.
The dark skies of Hawaii Island are important environmentally, economically, and spiritually. Good lighting can protect our dark skies and enhance our homes, communities, and business environments. We believe that if we educate people and are pono (act correctly), the business will be truly sustainable.
Principal Products and Services of LeiManu Designs
The principal products of LeiManu Designs are handcrafted lights and lūʻau torches in stainless steel and copper. We also manufacture custom tables, windows, doors, security screens, and other items as commissioned for both interior and exterior environments. We specialize in designing and manufacturing landscape and interior lighting and complimentary products to give a harmonious flow to Polynesian and Asian style architecture.
The management team of Leilehua Yuen and Manu Josiah, with Don Yuen advising, has over two generations of experience, and has developed a network of small businesses to direct the manufacture of anything a home or business needs. We work with general contractors, specialized contractors, architects, and designers to provide the best possible service to our clients.
Because we are a small and flexible business, we can reconfigure to meet the needs of both large and small clients. We are proud that our products grace properties from micro-homes to large internationally known resorts such as the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, Margarita Village, and many others.
Our primary service is listening to our clients and customers. We learn what their dreams are for their environment, and then enable them to achieve lighting installations that unite beauty with function. We do not need to mix and match off-the-shelf products to try and get close to what a client envisions. We work with our clients until we can see what they see, then craft their vision into reality.
What sets LeiManu Designs Apart
- Experience – with Don Yuen as creative advisor, LeiManu Designs has over six decades of experience in design and manufacture of landscape and interior custom lighting. Though the Malama Torch®️ was created in 1967, Don Yuen was manufacturing custom pieces long before that.
- Flexibility – we make each item by hand, so we can customize any of our products – or design, prototype, and manufacture an entirely new item.
- Tradition – Strongly grounded in Hawaiian culture, we bring that esthetic to our work, helping clients to create an authentic sense of place.
LeiManu Designs and Community Commitment
In 2015, LeiManu Designs was recognized by Chase Mission Main Street with a $100,000 small business development grant. LeiManu Designs was the first Hawaiʻi-based business, and the first Native Hawaiian owned business to be so recognized by Chase. Commitment to community plays a large role in the selection of Mission Main Street recipients. Local media covered the award.
LeiManu Designs is active in the local community, and has sponsored a number of events, including three years of the Hilo Intertribal Powwow, and fifteen years of the Hilo Lei Day Festival.
LeiManu Designs has donated products to numerous charity fundraisers, and has contributed eight scholarships for youth to attend music camps, including for a young man who has now made music his career.
The company also has provided pro-bono expertise in lighting design to a variety of non-profit organizations. Stainless steel and copper are sourced from local suppliers, and from local recycling centers.
Many of these suppliers are local crafters who provide components such as traditional bark cloth and hand-blown glass for art-lighting and one-of-a-kind pieces. Many of the LeiManu products incorporate found, recycled, and repurposed materials. These unique pieces were featured in fundraising art shows for the Volcano Art Center and for the East Hawaiʻi Cultural Center / Hawai`i Museum of Contemporary Art.
LeiManu Designs also facilitates Manu and Leilehua’s cultural practice and passion: teaching traditional Hawaiian culture and arts in some 40 outreach and educational events per year. The couple also were on the team of artists who provided programs in Hawaii schools for Artists in the Environment, a 501-C3 environmental education program.