Our Story

We didn’t originally want to do digital products.

We wanted to turn our sticker making hobby into something that could help pay the bills. Pipili is the Hawaiian word for 'sticky', and we loved the play on words. We also started planning maybe expanding beyond stickers to things like t-shirs and hats. When we started designing and researching ideas, we noticed that there wasn’t a lot of digital art crafters could use that really reflected day-to-day life and culture in Hawaii. While we don’t think there is anything wrong with coconut trees, plumeria, and pineapples, it was a little sad to see those as the main results for any internet search mentioning Hawaii. Our goal was to have products that showed what we love about living here and reflected the diverse cultures that have become part of what we call “every day Hawaii”.

Like everyone else, The 2020 pandemic forced us to rethink a lot of things. Pipili is also the Hawaiian word for ‘tenacious’. So in the spirit of sticking with it, we decided we could still share the things we love about living in Hawaii while changing our product. And since we had noticed a lack of local digital products, we found a way to still focus on our goal. October 2020 we opened our first Etsy shop with ten digital files. We now have two Etsy shops that sell digital products and over 2,200 files. We also have two Etsy shops that sell physical items. One of them is a dedicated sticker shop - a nod to our original plan. Most of our products use our designs and has been a great way to show what can be done with a digital file and a little imagination. We love when people send us pictures of what they’ve created with our files, or when we see our designs walking around town. And we also love seeing how Hawaii digital files now has a wide variety of options and styles created by many different artists.