It’s time to welcome a new initiative to grow the bustling landscape of business and innovation in the state of Hawai‘i. Headquartered in the historic Dole Cannery, product accelerator Mana Up aims to help local companies scale for global expansion and compete in the world marketplace by leveraging Hawai‘i’s unique assets and powerful brand.

Mana Up’s biannual 12-week curriculum includes sales, marketing and scalability consulting, curated mentorship from industry leaders and workshops on branding, product development and more. In addition to creating a space for innovation and collaboration, the program provides distribution opportunities through partnerships with Hawaiian Airlines and others, plus an e-commerce platform designed to get each cohort’s Hawai‘i-made products into the hands of those around the world.

“The companies we selected for our first cohort represent the future of our economy by showing how a product from Hawai‘i can be a competitive advantage rather than a prohibitive cost,” says Mana Up co-founder Meli James, already a familiar name in Honolulu’s business community as president of the Hawaii Venture Capital Association. “This cohort has already achieved remarkable success by authentically integrating Hawai‘i’s brand into their own. Yet the deciding factor was that we see tremendous potential for each company to grow internationally because of the caliber of the product and entrepreneurs.”

James and her co-founders Brittany Heyd and Michael Cheski are poised to develop Hawai‘i’s next 100 product companies into powerhouses earning $1 million or more in annual revenue. Heyd’s background in the business world includes serving as managing director of Washington, D.C.-based incubator 1776 and working on economic policy at the Obama White House. Mana Up is Cheski’s third local initiative following work on the relief efforts Aloha for Japan and Aloha for Philippines. He brings e-commerce expertise having launched sales for more than 100 products on Amazon, QVC, TLC and Food Network, among others.

Mana Up’s first cohort of 10 local companies were selected from 85 applicants whose traction in the market already earns them annual revenue beyond Mana Up’s baseline requirement of $100,000. All are entwined in Hawai‘i’s agricultural sector by either growing their own products or sourcing raw ingredients from local farms.

“Hawai‘i’s agriculture is at a turning point,” says Dana Sato, director of asset management at Kamehameha Schools. “Over the past 30 years or so, big monocrop producers have been shutting down operations. When this trend started, it was tough to find farmers to farm these large acreages of fields. Today we have a mix of farmers, but we’ve seen small to mid-size farmers struggle to create economically profitable businesses. We’re thrilled to see innovative companies finding a product mix that can keep food production local, maximize use of the land and allow farmers stable and profitable sources of income.”