Post #734015 by tikicoma on Wed, Dec 31, 2014 12:12 AM

The New Yorker article yielded little new. I seems to me that OoH started in Hilo to sell orchids and other Hawaiian gifts and had branches across the hawaiian islands and in Japan. The Hilo orchid selling business appears to still be open and an obit I came across makes it sound like the Hilo business has been open at least 60 years. The article says the NY shop opened in 1952 and an obit mentioned that the lady came from Hilo to NY in '52 to work there. I guess the owners of the NY shop expanded their offerings, creating a 'better' paper cocktail umbrella and invented a machine to make plastic leis that ran 24 hrs a day 7days a week to supply Polynesian Pavilion at the 1964 NY Worlds Fair. I wonder if the NY OoH started as one of the branch offices then expanded in the early 60's into tropical restaurant supplies but never took a new name? I'll never know until we see those old catalogs.

aloha, tikicoma