List of Hawaiian Stores in San Diego

I have come to the conclusion that much of the population in southern California really doesn't know the geographic boundaries of San Diego, or that North County businesses are still part of San Diego County.

If you look at any map of San Diego County you will see that it's borders extent all the way up to San Clemente, which then turns into Orange County. Having said that, I have decided to compile a small list of the known, as well as some little known stores that are Hawaiian themed. Some sell Hawaiian clothing, some sell food, some sell fresh flower leis. Some are predominantly Hawaiian and some are not.

• Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts, Downtown Escondido
• Green Tea Hawaii, Westfield North County Mall
• Hansen's Surf Shop, Encinitas
• Ohana Creations, Carlsbad
• Motu Hawaii, Pacific Beach
• Marukai Living, Kearney Mesa
• Island Hoppers, San Diego
• South Pacific Shore Hawaiian Clothing, National City (I didn't give them a link to their website because customers say they are never open).

There are probably a few other places like Wal-Mart, Target etc. that have some seasonal offerings that are Hawaiian, such as Home Depot sells Tiki statues and decoration during summer months.

But we prefer to shop the smaller mom and pop stores in San Diego County because without our continues support they will be gone.

You can also find Hawaiian products such a imported shirt, leis and trinkets in many of the surf shacks that dot the beach communities and boardwalks.


Mahalo

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

Famous Men in Tacky Hawaiian Aloha Shirts

When it comes to wearing tacky Hawaiian shirts it's a mans world, few things bring out the Aloha in a man than a brightly colored button up shirt with big bold colors and tropical flowers representing the Hawaiian islands.

Throughout the years countless numbers of people have visited Oahu, the big island of Hawaii, Maui, Lanai etc. and the male visitors have always had one common thread (pardon the pun) with that being they all wore colorful often tacky Hawaiian shirts.

Whats tacky you say? For starters how about a mens Hawaiian shirt with beer bottles or even something really sick looking like the official ugly Hawaiian shirt from Wave Shoppe.

Be it a tropics loving man from Nebraska or famous people like the Tom Selleck and Will Pharrell, just about everyone has worn one at least once.

Being a guy myself I still can not tell you what it is about these shirts that I find so attractive.

In a lot of foreign countries the women associate flowery shirts on men as an indicator that they are gay, though I assure you that flowery shirts are a very poor indicator of your sexuality.

In my opinion the real reason men wear these styles of shirts is that they work a lot of hours with little time to just kick back and relax.

Wearing shirts with tropical flowers and palm trees etc. often has a Zen like effect that creates a direct connection between the man and the Hawaiian islands

Labor Day Clothing Recommendation

Labor Day 2014 is Monday, September 1st and while its the largest BBQ holiday on the planet, its also a good time to bust out your favorite Hawaiian shirt.

I don't want to get into writing about whether or not to wear white after Labor Day, because white is in a lot of the designs people wear year round.

So I think I will just skip all of that and jump right into what I am wearing for Labor Day. And without further ado I am going to wear a Tapa Hawaiian shirt with khaki shorts and my trademark flip flops.

I chose this color combination for a few reasons, the first one being that I simply love brown!

The second reason is that the pattern in this particular shirt exemplifies the spirit of Polynesia and Tonga.

This shirts design contains an authentic tapa design with traditional Tongan geometric patterns, Tongan warriors, canoe paddles, and of course sea turtles, you have to have sea turtles! If you don't know by now I own Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts in San Diego, and we have one of the largest inventories of Hawaiian shirts in the county.

Now if brown is not your thing, we offer a lot of other cool looking mens Hawaiian shirts online and if you are one that needs to try on your clothes before purchasing, you can hop into your car and head to our showroom, where you can purchase the very same shirts we offer online. We also offer some items in our downtown clothing store that you wont find on the online store such as hula dashboard dolls, leis, tiki mugs and more.

Hawaiian Baby Shower

Recently I was invited to a Hawaiian themed baby shower. One of my best friends was about to become a grandmother for the first time. The baby is going to be a girl so one of my gifts was our pink Hawaiian baby dress then I went to a local store and bought the baby some essentials like onesies, booties, blankets etc…. I just love baby showers! Charles and I are the proud grandparents of 2 grandchildren the eldest is Ava Rose she just turned 4 years old then we have our grandson Kaleb who is almost 2 and our third grandson (not yet named) is due June 13^th 2014 and yes it is a Friday the 13^th & my mischevious daughter jokingly says she will name him Jason J

Anyway I digress….so I walked into the shower and saw the usual things; palm trees, baby is coming banners, blue balloons, grass skirts surrounding several tables loaded with food and gifts but what caught my eye was the beautiful purple cake sitting in the middle of the table, it was decorated with white hibiscus and it said “Welcome Baby” but surrounding the cake was a beautiful icing lei.

Sample cake

It was just an eye-catcher and looked absolutely stunning in fact she used the lei that I gave her when she visited me last week. My friend is a baker and she made that cake stand out! I am trying to get a picture of the actual cake and will post it when I get one. The sample cake should get the message across.

So that is something others can do if they decide on a Hawaiian themed baby shower. We sell all sorts of men, women's and children’s Hawaiian clothing and colorful simulated silk leis at our store located in Downtown Escondido on Grand & Kalmia Street.

I love getting invited to tropical themed parties because I just have to lock the showroom door and can pick an appropriate outfit from the store.

I chose to wear our purple Hawaiian women’s shirt and paired it with a pair of white capris and white sandals. I had a great time and the Mommy to Be got a lot of much needed items including the first Hawaiian dress for her baby or should I say her “keiki”.

 

 

 

Mysteries of Spring Fashion, Solved in Seconds

With spring upon us men are yet again faced with that age old question on what shirts to wear in the spring.

Myself, I enjoy wearing mens Hawaiian shirts from a company called Wave Shoppe, largely due to them being loose fitting and that the colorful shirts they offer have short sleeves that look good on my longer than normal arms. Fit is important to me, I like my Hawaiian shirt short-sleeves to fall about one inch up from the crook of my elbow. Wave Shoppe Hawaiian shirts are cut with good proportions, and if your sleeves are much shorter (or longer) than what they offer online or in-store, you're getting into fashion territory that you may not want to tread in.

When wearing a collared dress shirt under a sweater; you always want to make sure that the collar is in and not out. But never, ever, wear a sweater over a Hawaiian shirt; if you’re cold don a light jacket or something.

And now we come to a point whereas we have to discuss long sleeve shirts with Hawaiian prints. In my opinion this is a fashion mistake, Hawaiian Aloha shirts have never been long sleeve, only the piecemealed long sleeve shirts worn by early plantation workers in Hawaii had actual long sleeves.

The workers long sleeved shirts were most often referred to as Palaka shirts (the prints often resembled a checkerboard) and had long sleeves to protect the workers during long periods spent working in the full sun.

So stay away from the often trumpeted "latest fashion" trends like long sleeves or pullover shirts look polo shirts etc. Do so and you wont look like a complete dufus.

Of course after years of almost collecting the brightly colored tropical themed shirts, I often find myself thinking about recycling. Ha not my shirts but recycling all of the empty cans lying around the house!

Whenever I buy a new garment from Wave Shoppe Hawaiian shirt, I never get rid of one to make room for another one. The one-in, one-out policy that applies to apply to a lot menswear does not (and never should) apply to tropical Hawaiian shirts and similar types of spring and summer clothing.

 

 

Hawaiian Souvenirs

Managing a Hawaiian shirt store in downtown Escondido certainly has its’ perks. The highlight of my day is interacting with our customers. Have you ever noticed that people who wear Hawaiian clothing can be funny and out-going? I often get to hear the good, bad and ugly highlights of their Hawaiian vacations & somehow the topics always turned to souvenirs and hands down, the ABC stores over there has the largest selection of souvenirs and they are one of my favorite places to go for Hawaiian souvenirs.

When Charles and I took our first trip to Waikiki of course I had a huge list of family & friends that I wanted to buy souvenirs for so even though Hubs hates shopping he was in his opinion kindly being patient (not really) and even walked into the first couple of stores with me.  It was after we entered the third store that he says to me “This stuff is the same stuff we saw at the last store, I going to sit on the wall and look at the beach”~!  When you translate it to “man-speak” that meant he was going to go looking at the bikini babes!  “Good Riddance” I replied.

Waikiki Beach has beautiful sidewalks

One souvenir I saw a lot of people picking up was the Hula Dashboard Doll. So I spoke to the store manager and bought 8 of them at wholesale and when I returned from vacation I put them in my store. About 2 weeks later I had a couple run into the store in a panic because they had been to Hawaii and forgot a souvenir  for one of their brothers.

It literally made their day to get their hands on a Hula Dashboard Doll. So in addition to some beautiful Hawaiian Shirts, Hawaiian Muumuu Dresses and Tropical Hawaiian dresses. I also now have a Tiki Hut whose shelves are stocked with Hawaiian souvenirs for those who didn’t get their list quite right.  Top sellers for me are mugs, hula dashboard dolls, candles, incense and any darn thing that has a turtle on it! What types of souvenirs do you buy when you go to the islands? 

 

 

When is a Hawaiian Shirt not a Hawaiian Shirt?

You can purchase Hawaiian shirts for men and women from Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts, Tommy Bahama, Reyn Spooner, Tori Richard, Kahala, Go Barefoot, Paradise Found etc. But when is a Hawaiian shirt not a Hawaiian shirt? Is it the design, the cut or the material that classifies it as a Hawaiian shirt? there are tons of shirts that have no Hawaiian or Polynesian designs on them at all. In example we have seen camp shirts with images of bears, hot air balloons, boats, airplanes, and even Hawaiian shirts with cars on the Internet and offline in many department and specialty stores.

Then we have the ugly (yet creative looking) Hawaiian shirt on the left. The shirt incorporates Hawaiian prints throughout yet looks like it was made by Dr. Frankenstein

Here is where you can purchase this ugly Hawaiian shirt which would indeed make a great gag gift for someone. I am thinking bachelor parties and birthdays for old Hawaiian shirt collectors that have everything. Your thoughts?