Dashboard Hula Girl Fashion Show

Aloha! Today's post is going to be a bit off the beaten path as we take a out of control turn at the fork in the road.  As far back as anyone can remember, people have been stylizing and personalizing their automobiles.

I remember quite well the days of seeing tiger tails (hanging off the fuel tank and the interior mirror), bug black and white fuzzy dice, and even Jesus statues adhered to peoples cars.

Then at some point in time there was the emergence of dashboard Hula girl dolls. Sure they are dolls, but to many they had names and were cheerful companions on many a road trip. The spring loaded base allowed them to gently sway while traveling down the highways. The adhesive pad on the base of the dashboard doll held them in place.

These dashboard ornaments were spring loaded and came in a multitude of themes such as a hula girl simply posing, or hula girl dancing with uli uli flowers and of course the iconic hula girl playing a ukulele which was usually available in quite a few variations.

So when we fast forward to today it appears that these spring loaded hula dolls are still as popular as ever.

We really couldn't draw the line with just one style of hula doll, so we added quite a few variations, that way prospective owners could have a bit of a fashion show before deciding on which one to buy.

Cereus Flowers Bloom at Night

Its hard to believe that it's already fall as well as starting to cool down in many parts of the country. But that doesn't stop us from making Hawaiian shirts no mam.

This week sewing did a partial release on a beautiful new design that's perfect for Hawaiian shirt Fridays at work, as well as holidays such as Christmas.

As our regular readers already know, we name our shirts, the names are usually derived from something in the shirts design, well most of the time. This one is called the Burgundy cereus flower Hawaiian shirt

Cereus flowers bloom at night, in Hawaii, night-blooming cereus crown the lava rocks and some species have a very short lifespan and bloom only once a year for a single night. But don't worry, the cereus flowers on these shirts are in bloom 24/7

We have some additional mens designs that are slated to be released late this year, just keep an eye on our authentic mens Hawaiian shirt department. Additionaly you could sign up for our newsletter, and be one of the first to get notified of new products, the form is located in the footer of our website.

Mahalo

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.

Men's Hawaiian Threads

This is the time of year that we start a review of sort on the current year clothing line, with he men's Hawaiian shirts section receiving extra scrutiny. This is not done by just one person, the entire staff is asked to reflect and provide their personal input on what Hawaiian shirts designs they think were popular, as well as which ones were not all that hot.

Yes, occasionally we put out a design that simply doesn't move as fast as others. Additionally lower sales doesn't necessarily mean it was a "bad print". Many of my personal favorites never sold in big numbers, beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but I can say that collectors and Hawaiian shirt addicts certainly knew a good shirt when they saw one

But today's post is not even about those shirts, it's about one of our most popular designs, the brown Hawaiian shirt with sea turtles

Part of the allure is that the coloring in this shirt is easy on the eyes and goes extremely well with khaki colored pants and shorts. While at first glance it my look a little busy, it's the fine detail that drives this one over the top. And then there is the layer of sophistication that airbrushed background, which we started using around 10 years ago, brings to the shirt. 

Keep an eye out for the new men shirts that we are rolling out over the next few months, they are going to look totally awesome! And the new Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts website is now up and running. Please have a look around and remember to like your favorite shirts with the Facebook button that may be found on every product page. Mahalo

Labor Day Hawaii

Its already September with Labor Day is just around the corner, it's also one of our busiest months. Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. While we work hard to sell all sorts of Hawaiian clothing, our line of men's Hawaiian shirts outsell everything combined. We get tons of positive comments on the awesome construction and fit, as well as our unique designs. We can only guess that everyone wants to look their very best and they do that with the help of Wave Shoppe!

This fall we are cutting and sewing some men's Hawaiian shirts with Plumeria flowers in navy blue and we are soon releasing our first burgundy colored design.

Some of the more popular colors have been purple, brown, and blue. Of course there are those ugly Hawaiian shirts that people seemingly cant get enough of. The shirts are made with all sorts of colors and designs, nothing matches, not even the shirt pocket.

We also started expanding the Hawaiian muumuu line with hot new colors decorated with plumeria flowers in 4 colorways, one being the ever popular purple. You will also find new caftans, as well as a few of our customer favorites

Also new for this year is a category called Accessories which will initially contain men and women's flip flops and tropical beach bags, something that we had many, many, requests for. Well that's it for now, have a fun and safe holiday!

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

Hilo Hattie files for bankruptcy protection, again

It seams that Hilo Hattie is on the rocks again, their parent company has filed for bankruptcy protection and it's not the first rodeo for the once beloved brand.  Back in 2008 Hilo Hattie files for bankruptcy, citing $23M in debt. Today the company filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court last night, listing debts of between $10 million and 50 million.

With another well known Hawaiian shirt business and related textile suppliers and Hawaiian shirt manufacturers indicating that sales are decent for this time of the year, you have to wonder what they are doing wrong.

Let me be the first to say that I am a fan of the brand as well as history behind Hilo Hattie. But I have to say that I have never been a fan of their clothing, especially the shirts.

The last time I was in a Hilo Hattie store, which was the San Diego location, I found the selection to be minimal and the men's shirts were sort of cheap looking. I expected to see better.

While the parent company will never publicly say why they are in dire straits financially, an educated guess is that they made bad investments in and outside of Hilo Hattie. Again, Hawaiian shirt sales for this time of month are relatively strong and with peak season right around the corner its shaping up to be another good year.

I know what I am about to say will bring out the haters but they should dissolve the company and put an end to repeatedly stiffing all of their creditors and investors. They were very close to dissolving in a prior bankruptcy, so maybe this time it will actually happen.