Bringing a Bit of the Beach Home

Souvenirs at Beach and Resort Stores

Top selling souvenirs may change, but at beach and resort stores, offering a mix of unique and location-oriented souvenir items always translates into strong sales and happy customers. After all, if life is a beach on vacation, many visitors want to bring a little salty taste of fun back home.

At California Seashell Company in Seal Beach, Calif., Manager Rachel Robilotta said many of the shop’s top-selling souvenir items are handmade. “Every year we make a couple thousand shell ornaments from scratch. People travel from all over to purchase them. We also do shell garlands with pieces of driftwood and we hand-make those as well. We carry decorative signs of all kinds with a beach and nautical theme that do very well, too.”

Display is extremely important Robilotta said, both to show off the product and draw attention to new items as they come in. “We hang our shell garlands from a ceiling or a hook, so that people can see them easily. And we keep a holiday tree up year ‘round to display shell items, too.” Additionally, with new items, she explained, “We rearrange the front window displays frequently so that every time I get a new item in, I put it in the window. Everyone who walks by on the street can see what we have, and the window displays really bring people in. I display it in such a way that everyone can see it with the price, too. And, we also have an online business, caseashell. com, so we do a lot of photographic displays that we can put on the website as well.”

Most of the new best-selling merchandise that is not crafted in-house comes from vendors the store has dealt with for many years, she said. “Many vendors are people

In the past, and currently, the store sells coral of all kinds, and it was the coral pieces that sparked the idea to put new items in the store’s front display windows, Robilotta attested. “It brought people in, and that made us decide we would do the same

Continued on page 92 thing with any other new items that we brought into the store. Window placement is a big factor now to draw attention to new things in the shop.”

At The Sea Shell Shop in Rehobeth Beach, Del., General Manager John Derrick termed the store’s top-selling souvenirs as an eclectic mix of popular kids’ items and entirely locally-focused choices. “Looking at items that make good souvenirs for our locale, we are famous for our fudge, and we sell tons of that. People love to bring it back home to their families and friends. We also do very well with hermit crab kits. You get everything for the crabs, water dishes, a certificate for live crabs, the whole thing.” Less locally based, he noted, “Poppitz and the Tik Tock octopus are the two best-sellers for us. Poppitz puzzles, the kids just love them; as for the octopus, it was such a social media sensation, so the audience is built in. It makes a smiley face if you are happy and is reversible to make a sad face when you’re not. Those two items are the current big trends.”

To draw attention to a new souvenir, like Robilotta, Derrick relies a great deal on window displays. “We have nice front windows, and we place new items there so everyone passing by can see them. Out on the highway, we have electronic billboard signs that advertise what we carry. People come to us for all the beach décor items that make up our store theme, you can find everything here, from sand piper carvings and seagull statues to nautical items of all kinds. After all, if you’ve been to the beach, you want to bring back a souvenir that reminds you of the beach,” he said.

As the store’s buyer, Derrick has been searching out best-sellers for 30 years, he said. “At this point I have an eye for what will and won’t sell. We mostly go to the big gift shows to find new merchandise, such as the Merchandise Mart in Atlanta, which has 28 floors – you can buy anything there.” He added, “You just pick out the items that are appropriate for your store, in our case, they are nautical in nature. Along with Atlanta, we also attend the big gift shows in Las Vegas and Gatlinberg, too, a week here and there, and we can pick out products that fit our theme but are unique and different.”

For Derrick, a past souvenir that sold extremely well in The Sea Shell Shop was Beanie Babies. “It was quite a craze. We still sell some of them because kids like the names. I think what I learned from this souvenir is that having a big mix of products, a good mix from expensive items to children’s toys, and jewelry, that’s important. You really need a little bit of something for everyone, which is why we have so many customers – because we do. We have a mermaid wall, bird statues for the bird lover, shell jewelry, glass sculptures with dolphins, postcards of all kinds – you name it, if it has a beach theme, we have it.”

In Astoria, Ore., at Finn Ware of Oregon, Continued on page 94