Beach-Themed Gifts and Merchandise Trends at Coastal Gift Stores

By Carimé Lane

Naturally, beach-themes are the focal point at coastal gift shops. In this article, find out what’s trending in beach-themed gifts and merchandise in three coastal gift shops across the country. What’s more: They’ll tell you how to leverage the surrounding beach area to make gift and merchandise sales.

Weston Roberts is the CEO of Stormin’ Normans (3,300-square-feet, earning upwards of $1 million/year) located in along Long Beach, Wash.

Stormin’ Normans is a familyfounded and owned business. The family owns six retail businesses in total along the Long Beach Strip.

Apparel is their top-selling gift. A lot of parents and grandparents shop at Stormin’ Normans for their kids and grandkids. “Kids apparel is big,” Roberts said.

Because they located in a small destination coastal town, they namedrop 99% of their apparel, said Roberts. “Anything name-dropped does incredibly well. We’ve experimented over the years with name brands like Quicksilver, Billabong and Roxy and nothing’s done as well as the namedropped Long Beach Washington apparel,” Roberts said.

Roberts explained they also collaborate with vendors to come up with their own apparel designs.

Gifts in the souvenir category are among the top selling items as well. These include name-dropped coffee mugs and trinkets, along with personalized goods like engraved seashell key chains, or pocket knives.

As for other types of merchandise, apparel for personal use is also a best-seller. Anything you can use while you’re visiting Long Beach sells well, said Roberts.

According to Roberts, that includes kites, beach volleyballs, bathing suits, beach blankets, rain jackets and hoodies, sandcastles and skim boards.

When selling goods with a beach theme, Roberts recommended listening to your vendors and maintaining a great relationship with them. “A lot of the vendors we work with are travelling around and talking to other retailers and know what’s selling, not just in your market but other markets – they have a good idea of what customers want,” Roberts said.

As well: Roberts said owners should interact on the floor with customers. They pair those customer interactions with vendor recommendations and put their own creative twist on that to formulate their own brand, he explained.

Kristin Fraser , founder of The Grapeseed Company, owns gift shops in two beachside towns: the 1,200-squre-foot Carpentaria store with an additional 350-400-square-feet of outdoor garden space used for classes and various artisan pop-ups and the Santa Barbara 1,500-square-foot location.

The Grapeseed Company’s signature scent lines sell best here. They crafted scents like ‘Surf’ and ‘Sunshine Bay’ to smell

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Kristin Fraser, founder of The Grapeseed Company. The company’s Carpentaria location features an additional 350-400 square feet of outdoor garden space for classes and artisan pop-ups.

Beach-Themed Gifts (From page 41)

like Santa Barbara and the ocean. Products with these scents are great take-home gift purchases for visitors because they “transport you to a place,” Fraser said.

Customers are drawn to scented products they can use on a daily basis such as organic aromatherapy mist, lotions, soap, or a shampoo or conditioner Fraser said.

Pre-packaged items like their ‘Surf’-scented organic, homemade soap with swirls of blue made from a natural mica and organic SPF coconut lip balm sell very well. These retail for $15. Other best-selling pairings are their hand wash and lotion and their aromatherapy mist, bath and massage oil combo.

These gifts are easy to transport. Plus it’s easy to take home multiple gifts like these home, Fraser said.

“What kept two brick and mortar stores open throughout all of Covid was the fact that we have a product line that you use up and come back for,” said Fraser. Locals keep coming back for products and visitors can re-purchase items online.

Consumables are also ideal for gift-gifting.

“People don’t want to give more gifts that are just going to pile up and not be used, so consumable gifts are really hot right now,” Fraser said.

Their jewelry department is their second biggest selling category. Local makers forage local beaches for treasures, including sea glass, and the mini abalone shells that are unique to the area.

Their third best top seller is art, ranging from fine art to prints to notecard sets that have a different painting on each card. They feature art from eight lo- cal artists, who often paint beach scenes.

Additionally, they have a relationship with their artists: If the artist does a private commission for someone in town, then the artist will make a print of it for them to sell. Prints created this way sell very well, expressed Fraser.

Even if customers can’t tuck fine art items into their suitcase, the store will ship fine art to a customer’s destination.

At The Grapeseed Company, Fraser believes in selling high end artisan products you don’t see everywhere, and mementos from the area– not magnets or postcards. According to Fraser, this is what draws a customer base amongst visitors and locals alike.

Serenity Shells was born when Necole Ganley , Serenity Shell’s owner and founder, suffered a Covid-related job loss. In May 2021 Ganley, with the encouragement of her two children, opened her nautical-themed gift shop on the second floor of a large building housing many other small shops in Asbury Park, N.J.

She sold her own creations–shells overlaid with vintage

Beach-Themed Gifts (From page 43)

and used napkins trimmed with gold– and the merchandise of other small business owners she met when she was a vendor at various shows such as farmer’s markets and craft events.

She moved her small shop online in October 2021. She found the other shopkeepers in the building to be unwelcoming and made the decision to pack up shop and continue selling online and at temporary markets, where she is now cultivating a flourishing business.

Oysters are the top sellers among Ganley’s shells. Ganley said the oyster shells are best-selling because they catch a customer’s eye with their unique shape.

In her storefront, Ganley would pair various collections–such as her Protection Collection, which included shells painted with the “Evil Eye” and “The Eye of Horus”–with crystals from other vendors. These pairings were frequent purchases among customers.

Aside from beach-themed gift items, the store also found beach towels made from recycled blankets sold well. The blankets were dyed with natural colors, such as vegetable dye. Since they were two blocks from beach, Ganley found any beach necessities to make natural purchases for customers.

If you own a gift shop in a coastal area, she recommended doing your homework on the surrounding area. You could use the names of nearby beaches or landmarks to create items. In her shop, any images of the iconic Tillie the clown in Asbury Park were easy sells. “They just wanted it; they didn’t care about what it was on,” Ganley said.

Ganley also suggested you don’t restrict yourself to traditional beach-themed merch, like laying in the sun, getting a tan and so on. Customers also love nautical themed merchandise like mermaids, starfish, and sea creations. Customers are always looking to decorate their beach houses.

You should also be mindful about the colors customers are looking for when it comes to beach-themed merchandise, said Ganley. Bright, sunny and eye-catching colors are perfect for beach-themed merchandise. Blues are always a big seller for her. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a shell or a blanket: Blue is always a best-seller,” Ganley said.