Backyard dreams

Some shoppers want a patio or deck where the sound of wind chimes helps them remember being awash in coastal breezes, while others want an outdoor living oasis replete with pillows and furniture in sea-themed hues and designs. Whatever the decorating goal, there has never been a better time for retailers to offer consumers everything they need to create the beach-themed outside living space of their dreams.

Bethany Trading Co. in Bethany Beach, Delaware, carries a broad range of outdoor items covering everything from fun beach toys for kids to home decor, says Manager Victoria Daza. Popular outdoor decorating styles for this year are shells, nautical and coastal, she says, with beautiful coastal colors and prints from local artist Gretchen Spraul finding favor.

Outdoor items the store carries include garden flags, bird houses, wind chimes, wooden beach signs, metal yard birds, surf boards for walls, stepping stones for gardens and cast iron accessories to accent gardens and walkways such as birds, ducks and mermaids.

“We carry all sorts of coastal and nautical items, from brass bells to ship wheels, fun decorative hooks to fun metal outdoor wall art, and I can’t forget our very popular Door Mates that are very cute with a little adult humor written on them,” Daza says.

The materials and items that do best for Daza are nostalgic metal signs and wood beach signs in coastal colors and assorted sizes. Home and garden flags and yard decor items are also popular, she says.

“I like to arrange our home decor by style and color,” she says, adding that about a third of Bethany Trading Co.’s offerings are outdoor accessories. “They always do great in the spring and summer.”

The store has a dedicated area for outdoor accessories where all the items are set up on displays.

“The designated area is well known to our customers year after year,” says Daza. “I feel that everyone local or visiting knows us for our yard and home decor, I can’t say one more than the other. Although, if I had to pick, it would be vacationers.”

Timeless trends

For Steff Speirs, owner of Sunshine & Sweet Pea’s Coastal Decor in Virginia Beach, a range of garden items, including shells, wind chimes and outdoor art pieces sell well.

The store is arranged by color, and style trends this year include shells, sea life, mermaids, nautical and latitude and longitude items. Also, goods with inspirational sayings have stayed popular with a wide range of customers.

Brights dominate at Sunshine & Sweet Pea’s. “My customer base and my store always tend to go more toward teal and bright colors. Customers tend to shy away from darker pieces,” Speirs says.

Popular materials and finishes include wood, driftwood, shells, metal, ceramics, rustic and whitewashes. Non-canvas art, including surf boards, pallet wood and round wood pieces are also emerging as in-demand. Canvas and matted, framed art is not popular currently, she says.

Outdoor merchandise is displayed all the way through the store, and appears both inside and outside.
Speirs says outdoor items’ sales at Sunshine & Sweet Pea’s starts in March with the warmer weather and will fade off around late September.

“I want to expand more on outdoor, but it’s maybe 15% of my business currently on accessories,” she says. Her customer base for outdoor items includes vacation homeowners and year-round residents.

Coastal preferences

The C&F Enterprises brands of C&F Home, Beachcombers Coastal Life and Rightside Design offer a range of beach, coastal and nautical outdoor accessories.

“For the home, our popular outdoor textile categories include pillows, throws, and table linens in coastal, beach and nautical colors and imagery,” says Colleen Hall, vice president of marketing, C&F Home, Beachcombers Coastal Life and Rightside Design. “We also have garden decor and wind chimes in coastal and nautical themes for our garden centers.”

Hall says for 2023, “We’re really excited about the launch of our boating throws in C&F Home, which are lightweight woven indoor/outdoor throws. We’ve always been strong in the outdoor pillow market, particularly with our coastal motifs, and these solid throws can sit alongside those popular items, or on their own.”

She adds, “The category expansion allows us to continue growing in the outdoor living space, which has become a key selling point in home buyers as consumers continue to try and find relaxation through connecting with nature. We believe one can find a relaxing outdoor retreat wherever one lives, whether someone has a sprawling backyard, or an apartment balcony with the right accessories.”

The company’s most popular outdoor decor items this year include its coastal motif outdoor pillows. Wind chimes are C&F’s most popular outdoor hard good.

Blue and white “continues to be our top selling color combination for beach, coastal, nautical and everyday alike,” notes Hall. “It’s a classic combination that can be dressed up or down depending on the layering of textures and accompanying accessories.”

She adds, popular prints include seashells and coral, sea birds and turtles.

There are definite variations in tastes and styles, however. Hall advises, “You have to think of the coastal customer in smaller segmented customer groups, not just one catch-all category.” For example, she says, coastal can be broken down into a subset of styles all their own such as tropical boho, or coastal farmhouse.
Additionally, the popularity of certain beach, coastal and nautical styles and imagery can vary from region to region.

“East Coast and West Coast aquatic life is very different, so our customers in those regions are looking for ocean or river wildlife specific to their areas of the country.”

Likewise, she says, as you move up and down the East Coast, the wildlife is area specific in demand. “I might be able to sell one manatee towel to a store in Rhode Island, because, come on, who doesn’t love manatees? But, I’m really going to sell that icon down in Florida.”

Native sea life aside, coastal colors and product textures have universal appeal, Hall notes, with outdoor pillows continuing to be strong year after year.

Pillow popularity

Building on its pillow success, C&F recently added Rightside Design to its portfolio. Lynn McKernan, Rightside Design’s vice president, product design and development, says while the brand offers a variety of housewares, it is the outdoor pillow collections that customers are primarily in the market for.

Core to the line is indoor/outdoor higher-end pillows featuring embroidery and designs that complement the pillows already offered by C&F. For example, there is an octopus outdoor embroidered pillow in happy colors such as corals.

Rightside Design is launching a new collection of greens and neutrals “with more of a silvery sage green, silvery blues etc. that will appeal to most coastal buyers that can easily work with most decor pieces,” says McKiernan. “Also new are collection add-ons in colors that work well for us, such as the navy and white nautical and the sea glass color series.”

She has observed an uptick in buyers “looking for higher end goods with impeccable quality that lasts.” Additionally, more customers are looking for corals, neutrals and greens. Octopus and shorebird designs are trending.

"My customer base and my store always tend to go more toward teal and bright colors. Customers tend to shy away from darker pieces.” — Steff Speirs, Sunshine & Sweet Pea’s Coastal Decor

McKiernan designs to demographics. “The Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic regions very often buy the navy and white, nautical and neutrals, blue crabs and shellfish patterns. The Southeast coast and Florida do quite well with bright corals, turquoise and indigenous species such as lizards, tropical fish, palms etc. The West Coast buyers are trending with gray and white, pale pink canyon colors and Pacific blues,” she says.

Surf’s up

Since 1998, Beaver Dam Woodworks in Honey Brook, Pennsylvania, has been handmaking a wide range of outdoor hard goods for the patio, yard and garden, including lighthouses that are available in sizes from 2 feet to 12 feet tall and bear the likeness of many iconic lighthouses, from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod.

“We do a vast array of nautical lawn decor, lawn accessories, bird feeders, nautical furniture and much more,” says Owner Amos Kauffman.

In 2023, the company launched the surf table and chair set, folding surf end table, corn hole games, lighthouses with storage and poly planters.

“By far the most popular items for 2023 are the surf table and chair set and the surf end table,” he says.
Blues and whites are the colors in most demand, and while Kauffman hasn’t noticed a dramatic difference between what items sell in the North versus the South, he says demand in the South is intense currently. The company’s products are also popular in lake regions.

Bestsellers for any climate

Pleasant Street Designs Inc., DBA My Word! has introduced new and fun art on existing bestselling products such as Adoornaments, Skinnies, Porch Boards and Stand Out-Signs.

Jen Heamer, national sales manager, says they are “great accents to any home as well as the perfect gift to remember a special vacation or place. Most of our outdoor decor is actually 100% weatherproof too and printed with fade-proof ink so they are made to be outside year-round in any climate,” she adds.

The company offers a wide range of both indoor and outdoor decor to accent beach and lake homes, and its products are designed, produced and shipped in Massachusetts.

Most popular this year are Adoornaments. “They were introduced last fall and retailers have loved them,” Heamer says. “They are a perfect 19-inch size for the front/side doors of a home with beautiful designs, and are a great replacement for wreaths, as they will last longer and are much easier to store.”

What sells varies significantly from region to region, according to Heamer. “Turtles always seem to sell well for us in the South, and then across the country it is shells, lighthouses and beach designs. We are based out of the Northeast and our retailers here love lobsters, shells and lighthouses.

She adds, “Down South they love the flamingos and turtles. Out West it seems to be more sunsets and beach scenes, at least for our products.”

Customers also love the sentiment and humor of My Word! products, especially those featured on the company’s Skinnies signs, according to Heamer.

Whether offering outdoor merchandise depicting manatees and flamingos in Florida, crabs and lobsters in Maine, or stunning sunsets in California, decor products for the perfect backyard oasis are always changing and evolving.