On the second floor of a factory in Pearl City, overlooking Pearl Harbor, workers cut leather by hand, check each piece against the light, and press soles before they leave the building. The island air mixes with the smell of rubber and leather in the same way it has since 1946.
Matt Carpenter grew up on that factory floor. His father, John, purchased Island Slipper from its founding Motonaga family in 1986, and Matt can remember working there as a child, watching raw materials become finished footwear. He left for college on the mainland, married his high school sweetheart Tersha, and spent four years in corporate jobs off-island. In 2011, they came back. Tersha joined as CFO and Matt as Vice President, ready to take the 80-year-old business into the next generation.
Island Slipper is a beloved, deeply local brand. It also has a geography problem.
“Being on an island has its pluses and minuses,” Matt said. “If it doesn’t come in by boat or by airplane, it’s not getting here. That is probably one of our biggest challenges.”
The same constraint applies in reverse. When a customer on the East Coast orders from Island Slipper, shipping from Oahu takes five to seven days. The cost is higher than mainland competitors. The timeline is slower. For a small business, both matter.
Selling in Amazon’s store changed the equation.
Island Slipper joined Amazon Handmade in 2020, after Amazon invited them into the program as a verified handmade seller. The program guided them through setting up listings, understanding Amazon Ads, and building their storefront. It was an entry point. As Tersha learned the tools, she discovered Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), a service that lets sellers ship inventory to Amazon’s mainland fulfillment centers in advance. From there, Amazon handles storage, packing, shipping, customer service, and returns, so when an order comes in, Island Slipper doesn’t have to touch it.
“The fulfillment centers are all on the mainland,” Tersha explained, “so it’s much faster to get the products to our customers.”
Island Slipper now ships boxes of its bestselling styles to Amazon regularly, replenishing stock every couple of weeks. When a customer orders one of those products, it arrives in one to two days instead of five to seven. For a business shipping from the middle of the Pacific, that closes a competitive gap that geography had left open for decades. And because Amazon manages returns and customer service on fulfilled orders, the Carpenters aren’t coordinating those exchanges across an ocean.
“Ever since we started and as we’ve slowly added on the Fulfillment by Amazon, we’ve definitely seen an acceleration in our sales growth,” Tersha said. “For a while we were doubling year over year. That slowed down a bit, but we’re still running at about 50% up compared to last year.”
Tersha extended the advantage further using Multi-Channel Fulfillment, which allows Amazon to fulfill orders placed outside of Amazon’s store as well. She integrated it with their website and added a Buy with Prime button. Buy with Prime is a service that lets customers shopping on a business’s website check out using their Amazon account and receive fast, free delivery on eligible orders. The button appears underneath the add to cart option when a product is available through Amazon’s fulfillment network, so customers can see which products qualify for faster delivery.
“We’ve had customers that have been very excited to be able to get their product faster by using that Buy with Prime button,” Tersha said.
In addition to Buy with Prime, they’ve added Amazon Pay to their website to streamline purchases of self-fulfilled items as well. Amazon Pay is a payment solution that lets customers use the payment methods stored in their Amazon accounts to check out on business websites and apps. The service helps businesses reduce friction at checkout while giving customers the convenience of using payment methods they already trust.
The Carpenters credit the combination of Amazon’s seller tools: Fulfillment by Amazon, Multi-Channel Fulfillment, Buy with Prime, and Amazon Pay, with helping them build their legacy business for the next generation as they grow from island to mainland.