Friends turn vision into lifestyle brand with Aloha Collection

While waiting to board a recent flight, I noticed a cheery blue bag with a wave motif resting at the feet of the woman next to me. “Is that an Aloha bag?” I asked, and she lit up, immediately launching into a story of how much she loves this bag, how many others she has, and how she’s regretted not traveling with them on occasion. It struck me then, just days after interviewing Aloha Collection’s co-founder Rachael Leina‘ala Soares, that this exchange is precisely the vision that Soares and fellow co-founder Heather Aiu have for the bag company they created with a good idea, a few thousand dollars, and little else just over a decade ago.

“I think it’s so great how it’s a talking point where if you see someone on the road, you can go up and say hello, because you have that in common,” says Soares of the brand’s unique bags. “The whole thing is [about] these more in-person connections that we’re trying to facilitate.” And when those connections happen, as it did for the pair when they were recognized as “the Aloha girls” on the other side of the world in Italy, “it’s a dream come true,” says Soares. “I never thought we were going to get this big.”

Far from false modesty, it’s understandable that she wouldn’t have been able to predict that her idea would evolve into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Though she knew for years that she wanted to go into business with her then-roommate and friend Aiu, the pair had yet to land on what they could agree was a viable concept. “I wasn’t that great with money, but she worked at a bank, so I figured she was good with money. And she would laugh at me and say, ‘No, I’m good with my job,’” says Soares. When the market turned, Aiu thought it was time to start thinking about a backup plan. “She called me and she asked me, ‘What are your top ten ideas for a business?’” says Soares. “So I pitched her the idea of the bikini bag.” 

“The bikini bag” concept she shared with Aiu was a bag Soares had cut up and re-stitched together to make a pouch for the bikinis and athletic clothing that she, then an international flight attendant, was always looking to stash neatly in her luggage without soaking or dirtying everything else. Soares had no idea what the material was or how to get more, but the two banded together, did some research, and asked around. “I think that’s how our entire business started — if you don’t know how to do something, you just go and ask people,” Soares says. 

The pair pooled together what money they had — $2,000 each — and got to work. “I said, ‘How am I going to pay my rent?’ And she said, ‘You always figure it out.’ So I put all my money down and just went for it,” remembers Soares. When they hammered out the framework for their idea, it wasn’t exactly conventional. 

“It’s so funny, because I think normally when people start businesses, they put together a business plan, and they go through whatever steps to take,” says Soares. “We never had a business plan. It’s like we had a ‘lifestyle plan.’”

“When we first shook hands in our living room… I told her, ‘I want to keep my flight attendant lifestyle and I don’t want to work in the office,’” Soares says. “And she said, ‘That’s great. I want to travel too.’ So travel was part of our core values.” Even so, Aiu wanted to “build an empire,” says Soares, but they agreed that giving back would be a pillar of their business from the start because, she remembers thinking, “If we’re going to get that big, what are we putting out into the world?” They decided to set aside five percent of all profits to donate to Hawaii-based causes (both are native Hawaiians).
In homage to their heritage and the spirit of Hawaii, they named their company Aloha Collection, because, says Soares, “then every time someone says ‘Aloha,’ it’s putting that frequency, that vibration of love, into the world, and the world needs that right now.”

More than a decade later, the friends and business partners are no longer roommates; Soares lives in Cardiff and Aiu recently moved back to Hawaii. But neither the challenges of running a business nor the new distance between them has dampened their partnership. Soares credits complementary skillsets and Aiu’s temperament. “When I met Heather, she was the most mellow Type A person I’d ever met,” she says. “That combination is very rare.”

Their life changes have impacted their brand in other ways, however. When Aiu welcomed a daughter, it motivated her to create a line of diaper bags. “Motherhood in 2022 inspired me to create the diaper bag I’d always dreamed of,” says Aiu. “Thoughtful, functional, and refined, our Le Bebe launches October ’25.” Adds Soares, “That’s one thing. As our lives are changing, then we’re going to come out with more products.”

Despite growth, success, and a lot more than $2,000 in her bank account now, Soares says, “It’s so funny, I feel like we’ve learned so much. I mean, we’ve grown so much, it’s almost unbelievable to see that. But it also feels like we haven’t even gotten started.”

And for those who truly haven’t gotten started, Soares offers these words: “Heather and I, we always say the same thing about if we could give advice to anyone: It’s to just start. It’s never going to be perfect. Just believe in yourself and go for it.” aloha-collection.com