
The management team from Allens Plumbing includes, from left, supervisor Ken Davis, owner Steve Allen, project manager Josh Kamaunu and operations manager Kane Coile.
When Steve Allen established Allens Plumbing on the Hawaiian island of Maui in the early 1980s, he had no grand strategy for becoming the owner of a multimillion-dollar-a-year operation. Instead, he found himself attending the School of Hard Knocks.
“My main business plan was...