Wholesale Madness: Act I

I was lamenting about the early days of our Hawaiian shirt business, we even had a few individuals tell us that the idea of going into retail and manufacturing was pure madness, but we went through with it anyway. I would love to tell you that the retail sales launched our bustling business, but that wouldn't be the whole truth.

Sure we had enough online orders to wet our whistle, but it was the small orders that we sold in bulk, and at a narrow profit margin mind you, that really moved us forward. We also quickly realized that the term wholesale had different meanings to different people. To us, buying wholesale meant purchasing a container or semi trailer full of garments. To others it meant that anyone with a business license should be able to buy a dozen or so shirts at the same discounts they get from their vendors.

We once took the large purchase route with a purchase of Hawaiian leis, we shared as container coming to port in Los Angeles. Let me tell you that we were not sure if we had the room to store pallets of them, nor did we know they would start degrade over time. We just couldn't phantom the logistics needed to do that with Hawaiian shirts, plus we were leaning towards making them in the USA.

In the end we took the middle ground and manufactured Hawaiian shirts with our Wave Shoppe label here on the mainland and cut a deal with a Oahu based Hawaiian shirt company to manufacture and sew our camp shirt style shirts, that way we could offer our customers Hawaiian shirts wholesale.

For the finicky customer we could offer camp shirts made in Hawaii and even more sophisticated button-up Hawaiian shirts that were made on the mainland, which also opened up additional shipping options. Customers were pleased and we are still here 10 years later.

Mahalo