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Business View Magazine
Cariloha Bamboo
Softer than cotton, stronger than steel
Sandy, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City, may be far
away from the sun-drenched beaches of Hawaii, Mex-
ico, and the Caribbean, yet the island lifestyle has al-
ways been on the mind, and in the heart, of Jeff Peder-
sen, President and CEO of two retail companies under
the PW Companies banner: Del Sol and Cariloha. With
more than 20 years of vacationing and working in and
around the cruise ship ports of the Yucatan Peninsula,
the Mexican Riviera, the Bahamas, and the Hawaiian
Islands, Pedersen had become enamored with their
cultures and steeped in their beachfront shopping ex-
periences.
For many years, he owned and operated Del Sol, a
retail clothing and accessories company, which was
originally established in 1994, and today has over
150 stores in 26 different countries. “In Del Sol, ev-
erything changes color in the sun,” Pedersen explains.
“You might have a T-shirt that says, St. Maarten, or St.
Thomas, or Nassau, or the Bahamas on it, and when
you go out in the sun, all the colors come out. It’s a
type of organic, photochromic technology that we de-
