Night Lights

Whether one calls them “nite lites,” or, as they are more widely known, “night lights,” these nifty little gift items deserve more than a passing glance. Skeptics need simply to check out the high-rent, high-traffic shelf space in the Honolulu International Airport and tourist areas like Waikiki. Often, right near the T-shirts and frequently right next to the cash register, you'll find shell night lights. This is a pretty fair indication of two things: First, night lights are an “impulse” item, which people buy on sight even if they did not come into the store with the intention of buying one. Second, night lights sell in huge numbers. Otherwise the valuable shelf space they occupy would be given to some more profitable item.

The economic reality has long been that the retail world is filled with too many different products chasing too little shelf space. Manufacturers compete in every conceivable way for the privilege of getting their products onto the shelves of high-volume retail establishments. Retailers—the good ones, anyway—continually evaluate their sales figures to determine which products are giving the best return per unit of shelf space. Products that don't perform are soon replaced with better prospects. Therefore, if you see products like shell night lights displayed in prominent retail space in high-volume stores over long periods of time, rest assured that these products are meeting real demand in a profitable way.

Of the many giant clam products that were crafted by the MMDC staff, our night lights were a true hit. We had no trouble at all retailing the crystal acrylic lamps for $24.99 each and the wall socket lamps for $5.99 to $9.99. Shop revenues soared whenever a busload of tourists entered the shop and all decided at the same time that they simply must have giant clam night lights. We instructed our sales staff to stress, “These lamps are hand crafted by local artisans. They glow in the dark with a soft, inspiring light.” Few customers could resist that pitch.

The colorful shells of T. squamosa and H. hippopus are by far the most suitable for making night lights, although some customers prefer an all-white light made from T. derasa shells.

A company in Honolulu called Ala Makana used to make night lights from giant clam shells imported from the Philippines. However, in the late 1980s, the Philippines government banned the export of giant clam shells. Apparently the accumulated stocks of Philippine giant clam shells are now depleted because finding giant clam shell night lights in Hawaiian gift shops is increasingly difficult. Other types of non-threatened shell species are being substituted. This does not mean that the demand for tridacnid shell lamps has diminished; in fact, their value may be presumed to have increased as a result of rarity.

Giant clam shell lamps illustrate an important fact of life in the tourist trade. Given a choice, most tourists prefer to buy a functional item rather than a merely ornamental item. That is to say, most would prefer to buy a clam shell that will be used as a lamp or as a planter or as a salad bowl rather than a shell that will simply sit on a shelf gathering dust. This is one reason that T-shirts and golf shirts with logos are so popular. They perform a useful function as clothing while allowing the buyer to make a statement about where he or she has traveled. A lot of tourist gift-buying fills an inner need to impress the folks back home. Functional items that will be used serve as constant reminders of the thoughtfulness of the gift giver.