If the shirt fits, wear it

Lately we have been getting an increased amount of calls from people asking if we buy slightly worn Hawaiian shirts. The calls usually start out something like "I have worn out all of my shirts and need to replace them" and we know that somewhere during the conversation they will be injecting the phrase "rather than throw them out, would you like to buy them".

First off we only sell new Hawaiian clothing and we do not operate a thrift store. But for the life of me I cant understand why someone would ever want to part with something personal like a well worn Hawaiian shirt, especially if they were high quality shirts came from Wave Shoppe Hawaiian shirts, or another awesome company such as Kahala.

I must admit that I am fine with tossing all of the imported shirting directly into the trash, the designs and construction had no value when they were new. 

While for the most part the vintage shirts tend to stay put, every so often we will get a call pertaining to re-homing someones prized collection. I just cringe when the first words I hear are that that some of the shirts they are re-homing are vintage Hawaiian shirts such as the one pictured below.

Vintage Hawaiian shirt

I can honestly say that I wear my Hawaiian shirts until they will no longer stay on my torso. If the shirt still fits even a little, I wear it. When I do have a shirt that is ready to be retired (which is quite rare), I treat the garments disposal just as if it was the American flag. No way would I be able to simply toss my old friends to the curb like that.

Wave Shoppe has a lot of it's first customers and they tell us that they have been wearing their shirts for 11 years now and they tell us that they still get comments on how great the shirts still look. Not to be a braggart, but that's a statement a lot of shirt makers will never hear.

Wave Shoppe Webstore Gets a Major Upgrade

Aloha,
Back when we started our Hawaiian shirt company in early 2004 there really was not a lot of web store options available to mom and pop operations like us. If I remember correctly there were Yahoo stores, Microsoft FrontPage and some other what you see what you get HTML editors. Of course you also had the option to code your own websites from scratch, but that was not within our skill-sets.

Earlier that year I was gifted a copy of FrontPage from a friend, not knowing what it was for I filed it in a drawer. But as time went on I started thinking about all of the sales that the website for company I worked for was bringing in. It wasn't long before I had the software installed and started dabbling with the features.

You may not know it but Wave Shoppe was primarily an automotive website that slowly morphed its way to a clothing only site. The automotive portions of the site went on to their own domains and a few are still alive today. Years and years had passed and Microsoft eventfully retired FrontPage and replaced it software called Expression Web.

We converted to that platform, but not without a lot of pain and agony, lots of things ceased to function with he upgrade. Over the years we worked out most of the major bugs. But it seams that in a blink of an eye the once shiny new website was over 10 years old and was really starting to show its age.

In June of this year we made the decision to abandon the original platform altogether. The Volusion platform we chose offered a lot of features to account holders, and ease of site management such as speedy product updating, as well as putting us in a better position in terms of user experience across all viewing platforms, such as tablets, PC and mobile devices.

Like all things new there is a learning curve, and of course a few minor bugs, but in the long run the website should stay modern for years to come.If you have not yet visited the newly designed website, click the following link to the homepage for Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts

We have also heavily invested in new inventory, as well as shored up our always in stock clothing items. We have even added a few new categories, have a look!

Mahalo

Hawaiian Shirts Last Forever and Other Fairy Tales

In todays topic we are going to discuss what it actually takes to manufacture well made clothing, though we will be sticking to our circle of expertise, which is manufacturing Hawaiian clothing. Our Hawaiian shirts will almost last forever, here is why:

At Wave Shoppe we offer our customers a variety of purchase options, you may purchase in-person at our retail store or you may purchase clothing online on our secure website. We primarily carry 3 clothing labels in our store, RJC, KY's and our own label, Wave Shoppe.

The major differences between the 3 labels we carry is that the RJC and KY's shirts are a camp style cut, meaning they do not have yolks and are open collar and do not button up to the neck. The Wave Shoppe shirts have yolks and under collars and button all the way up to the neck. We also apply fusible interfacing in key areas before sewing.

In short there are quite a few more components used to make Wave Shoppe's Hawaiian shirts for men vs. the camp shirts sold by others.

We firmly believe that the added components add a layer of sophistication to the shirts we manufacture, a comparable shirt would be the shirts made by Kahala, though our shirts are priced considerably less.

Material wise there is also a broad range of shirting utilized to construct Hawaiian shirts. Some shirting used in imported garments (as well as many garments sewn in Hawaii) has a noticeably lower thread count, which starts showing wear after just a few washings, imported shirts definitely wont last forever. All of our shirting used in the construction of the Hawaiian shirts sporting the colorful Wave Shoppe label is cotton poplin, which is a very durable, higher end cotton shirting.

But nothing lasts forever, even our shirts. All in all the shirts we sell in the showroom will last you quite a long time, longer than most of the Hawaiian shirts online. I have a few that are still looking good after 10 years of hard wear and tear.

We did promise you a fairy tale so here it is, on Amazon: The Emperor's New Clothes: A Fairy Tale (Little Pebbles)

Mahalo

Reflection of Aloha

Last weekend me and my wife had an opportunity to spend the day with our extended ohana and I have to say that I had a marvelous time. Normally I find that most parties I attend are for the most part pretty boring, but this weekend made me feel sort of blessed to be in the company of such wonderful people. Its amazing how Aloha unfolds and when you least expect it to.
 

We had a guest (shown above) that attended named Ipo Kahaialii and she so gracefully volunteered to entertain with Hawaiian story and song, she was captivating to say the least. Mahalo Ipo

Of course you can not have the ohana gathered together without having food, the party was a pot-luck so we got to eat grinds of all authenticity, with huli huli chicken being one of the main courses, prepared by chef Don of course!

And you have to love the aloha spirit of the girls who normally dance for Tipanie O Patitifa, they have a passion for Hawaiian culture and dance that is unsurpassed, fire up the ukuleles and its on folks.

Of course not only people get in on the action, our pets are also ohana. Pictured above is "little bit" and Coco the cockatoo whom is a real playa in disguise.

Of course we have to post one of those food shots that everyone loathes. George came late to the party citing work, though I think he got stuck in a tanning booth, so the backyard paparazzi snapped a picture of Don serenading George during dinner. We love you George, really bruddah.

Me Ka Pumehana A Me Ka Oiloli Kealoha

Quintinn Holi also attended and shared some wonderful Hawaiian stories as well, but I think I will save some of that for another post. Not to risk repeating myself but it was a simply wonderful day and a rare occasion to actually relax and not discuss work at all. Speaking of work, the holiday season is already upon us and I need to focus on getting our Hawaiian Aloha shirts inventory up to speed, so my Blog posts are going to be sporadic at best.

Sign up for our email notifications with the form, which is to your left, and be amongst the first to see some of the new designs and products that we will be striving to release in time for Christmas.

God bless and Mahalo!

Mele Kalikimaka A.K.A. We Have Cookies & Aloha

Aloha and Mele Kalikimaka! I was thinking what I would Blog about for my last post of the year, part of me feels I should tell you where to get a great Hawaiian shirt and the other part says to focus on fond memories of the past year. Given the fact that many wonderful things happen on a weekly basis and that I really don’t have time to write a book, I figure that I will close out the year with a short story about a new customer.

As many of you know we go out of our way to accommodate our customers needs, a few weeks back this lady came into the store and requested that we make her some 7X muumuus. Now normally that wouldn’t be a problem except for the Christmas holiday is right around the corner and sewing had already received their Christmas bonuses and for the most part have vanished for the year.

My wife was working the San Diego store that day and was well aware of the situation. But that wasn’t going to derail this customer, for moments after she was told there was no sewing she spoke those magic words that would open the gate to heaven, “I will bake him Christmas cookies”. That night I was told that I needed to make it happen or else (why me). Long story made short I managed to track down our main seamstress. While she laughed out loud at my lack of resistance for cookies she agreed to bail me out.

So a few days before Christmas she got the call that her order was ready, and in almost a blink of an eye she appeared with my plate of cookies (pictured above). So I must admit that whatever resentment I may have had for having to work so close to the holiday was instantly erased. So now that I am 3 pounds heavier than yesterday, I think that this is where I say mahalo prepare to jump ship for the rest of the year.

From all of us at Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts, we wish you the best Christmas and New Years ever!

Mahalo and Mele Kalikimaka

Escondido, California gets a dose of Hawaiian Tahitian Dancing

Aloha, towards the end of each year we try to do something momentous and this year is no exception. It became clear to us last year that our business is growing faster and larger than the current facilities can handle, which includes the additional 950 square feet we added onto our shipping operation. So the decision we made was to add even more square footage and open a retail showroom to showcase our Hawaiian wear.

While the business has already come out of the gate at a very fast pace, we thought that we would kick things up a notch by hosting a free Hula show. Also keep in mind that our showroom is located in the historic shopping district of Escondido, California. We sponsor a hula group out of Palomar College; Directed by Patriceann Mead, and in my own words, this Hula show was simply out of this world.

It was not long after we set up the speaker system that there was a run on Hawaiian shirts for men (even though leis and flower hairclips were also selling at a brisk pace).

The crowd of people soon started to gather in front of the storefront and it wasn’t long before the street was completely filled with onlookers and shopkeepers from some of the local businesses.

I mean there are not many men that can pass up watching beautiful Polynesian girls shaking their booty in public.

Im my opinion I had the best seat in the house, which was dead center of the stage.

But if you look at the picture of the fire knife dancer below, it appears that even Peggy (standing in the doorway) found a moment to enjoy the show while working in the store.

So you think this was a hula performance geared for men? No way dudes, we covered all the bases.

While this show was family friendly, we still managed to take care of the ladies fantasies with a fire knife dancer.

I wont name names but I recieved feedback from more than a few ladies that said they wouldnt mind helping with "putting his fire out" if you know what I mean.

While we took a few hundred pictures of the Hula show, it certainly isn’t feasible to post all of the hula girl pictures in a single blog post, so we hope you enjoyed the ones we have selected for you.

Mahalo!

Free Hawaiian Shirt from Wave Shoppe

Do you know of someone who is making a contribution on the Web, or in his or her community that does not get the recognition they deserve?

Why not nominate them for a free Hawaiian shirt?

Simply Post a Comment with a description of why you feel they deserve a free Hawaiian shirt. We will choose one special person from the nominations and they will be allowed to select a Hawaiian shirt of their choice from our website and they will have the opportunity to be featured on our blog along with the winning nomination.

Nominations must be posted by April 30th 2008. No purchase necessary to cast your nomination and you may nominate more than one person as long as you make a separate post. But you must also nominate someone that we can actually get ahold of.

The winner will be chosen by peeps that are not affiliated with our company. Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts will cover the cost of the product as well as the shipping cost.

Visit Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts