The Infante Ohana — we are the four children of Caroline and Raymond Infante. From left: Sonia Infante, Esme M. Infante, Brandon Infante, and Serena Cook
Caroline's booth at a craft fair, circa 1980. Our Dad, Raymond, who was an engineer, designed and built her booth setup. Mom's sales staff that day included Serena, left, and Sonia.
Caroline's booth at the Kam Super Swap Meet in Aiea, circa 1980. Among her salespeople that day were, clockwise from top, Esme, Serena and Sonia. The swap meet tent setup, also designed by our dad, Raymond, featured a preassembled tent rigging that swung out from a rack strapped to the top of the family stationwagon.
Our family ... circa 1987!
Meet our 'ohana
Aloha! We are the Infante Ohana. Our Islandwide Crafts & Food Expo is a family-run, kamaaina small business in Honolulu, Hawaii, that has been producing tradeshow-style craft fairs at the Blaisdell Exhibition Hall in Honolulu since 1987.
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Our beloved late Mom, Caroline M. Infante (read her incredible story here), was the Founding Expo Director for the Islandwide Crafts & Food Expo, and she raised us four kids in the family business.
When Mom worked as a clothing designer and seamstress from the 1960s to the late 1980s, we four children and our Dad, Raymond, worked alongside Mom in her sewing room as well as in her booth at swap meets, craft fairs and tradeshows. She nursed us as babies while she sewed, and carried us as infants even as she served customers at swap meets and craft fairs. As soon as we could walk and talk, Mom and Dad taught us how to set up a tent and a merchandise display, to work from predawn and in heat and flooding rain, and to smile as we said to customers, "Hello! May I help you look for something?"
When Mom began producing the Islandwide Crafts & Food Expo at the Blaisdell, we kept working alongside Mom and Dad. Back in the 1980s, we even did the heavy labor of carrying the massive steel tables and stacks of chairs to our vendors by hand! But most importantly, we learned from Mom everything we know about how to produce a major public event with hundreds of vendors and tens of thousands of shoppers — from the planning and administration, to the live management during the event, to the warm personal customer service for our cherished vendors and shoppers that Mom was famous for. We believe Mom built an extraordinary legacy, as a self-taught and hugely successful clothing designer and mass manufacturer, entrepreneur and event producer. She created this event that has turned into a beloved community tradition and touched hundreds of thousands of people over three decades and counting. And she was absolutely the most loving, caring, talented, zany, beautiful, fabulous mother. We miss Mom and Dad so deeply. And when it comes to this expo, Mom has left us huge shoes (cowboy boots!) to fill.
After our Mom passed away suddenly in 2022, following Dad's passing in 2018, we four had a difficult decision to make: With every one of us deep in our own full-time careers, some of us raising families, and two of us living on the continent, two living in Hawaii ... should we continue producing the expo? The answer was clear when we remembered how important it is to carry on this tradition and our Mom's rich and unique legacy. It's been really tough at times, but we are doing it! Even as we modernize some parts of the business and move it into its next version, we are striving to stay as true as we can to Mom's uniquely warm, homespun, relationship-based style of doing business.
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Right now we don't have titles. But we are a team — the Infante Ohana, carrying the family name and Mom and Dad's legacy with pride. The Infante siblings, in birth order, are Esme, Sonia, Serena and Brandon.