By Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros

Born and raised on Oʻahu, Taylor Yuen was in elementary school the first time she attended the Made in Hawaiʻi Festival in 2012. She was there to help with the family business, PorkGrinds Hawaiʻi, and worked the booth passing out samples to shoppers and would rearrange the boxes of products into forts during downtime, she recalls.

Fourteen years later, her startup Mākia Market, which aims to bolster opportunities for local student entrepreneurs, will debut at this year’s festival on Aug. 20 to 23 at the Hawai‘i Convention Center.

“This is a full circle moment for me,” says Yuen, who has a design and marketing company, Amataya, and is headed into her senior year at Chapman University in California, where she’s pursuing a degree in business administration with an emphasis in entrepreneurship and marketing and a minor in graphic design.

She graduated from Punahou School in 2023, the same year she launched Keiki Makers Market in the spring as “a passion project,” Yuen says; it has since grown to include more than 130 student makers from kindergarten through undergraduate university.

Her overall goal is “to make youth entrepreneurship, education, mentorship and resources accessible to students across the state of Hawaiʻi.”

“My journey as an entrepreneur began at the height of the [Covid-19] pandemic when social entrepreneurship became especially powerful. After joining a student-led initiative to support our school’s financial aid fund, my eyes were opened to a world in which my passions for art and creativity could make a tangible impact,” she told Aloha State Daily. “Participating in various student markets on my school’s campus, I realized just how many students were searching for similar opportunities and wanted to bring that concept into the community. This led me to explore and educate others about owning their passions, eventually resulting in the start of what would become Mākia.”

As part of the Chamber of Commerce Hawaiʻi’s Impact SmallBiz Accelerator program in 2025, Yuen decided that rebranding Keiki Makers Market to include adults would allow for future growth.

Read the full story here.