On the wild side

Every year, thousands of tourists travel to John’s Pass in Madeira Beach, Florida, with January to May marking the busy season for the destination. The boardwalk in John’s Pass looks much like an old fishing village, lined with stores and restaurants. Visitors can go to the boardwalk to sign up for pirate boat excursions, dolphin-watching trips and sunset cruises.

Village Boulevard is the main street that leads to the boardwalk in John’s Pass. A few blocks off the boardwalk, passersby on Village Boulevard might notice a bright yellow building lined with colorful surfboards, a sign with a big blue macaw holding a margarita and a giant wooden beach chair inviting people to stop by to take a picture.

Half of the colorful building serves as an ice cream shop; the other half is Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co., a seaside retailer that has been in business for over 41 years in Madeira Beach. The retailer started as a small Jimmy Buffett Caribbean Soul T-shirt shop along the John’s Pass boardwalk, but it grew and moved into the 900-square-foot storefront along Village Boulevard a few decades ago.

And while the retailer retains its Margaritaville vibe with Jimmy Buffett songs inviting people to shop, today, Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co. sells far more than just a few different fan shirts.

“It’s really evolved into more of an upscale Florida lifestyle boutique,” says Charlotte Hunter, co-owner of Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co. “It’s more upscale-type inventory and a laid-back Florida feel with boutique island clothes, flip flops and gifts.”

Bonding over Buffett

Charlotte and her husband, Jim Hunter, have owned Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co. for the past 12 years. Prior to that, the Hunters had some experience with retail since they had been managing an online Jimmy Buffett tailgating store called “Parrot-fan-alia.”

“We’re big ‘parrotheads,’” Charlotte explains. “Jim always wanted to start his own business. I said, ‘Why don’t you just go do something with Jimmy Buffett? That’s what you love.’”

So, Jim started Parrot-fan-alia in 2001 to serve as a one-stop online shop for fellow “parrotheads” to get their Jimmy Buffett tailgating gear: grass skirts, tiki decorations and more. While he liked the new retail work, Parrot-fan-alia was always more of a side project for Jim on top of his full-time job in accounting.

Jim says he first came across Wild Time when shopping for a specific Jimmy Buffett T-shirt for a Parrot-fan-alia customer. He met Kelly Letourneau, the previous owner of Wild Time, who helped him with his special request. With both stores offering Jimmy Buffett and Margaritaville-related merchandise, Jim says they began to trade merchandise when in a pinch. “If she would need something, we would just trade off stuff,” Jim explains.

Letourneau brought up from time to time that she wanted to sell her store, but Jim was skeptical. “Kelly had mentioned over the years that she was going to sell me her store and move to Tennessee,” notes Jim. “I always said, ‘Yeah, right!’”

In 2012, Letourneau was serious about offering her store to the Hunters. Jim says he and Charlotte were in a great position to be able to buy the store from her, too.

“We had always wanted to open a brick-and-mortar store, but the timing was never right,” Jim explains. “Kelly’s store and location were perfect, and that’s the kind of store we had always wanted to own. We were blessed to have the opportunity to carry on the Wild Time name and history at John’s Pass.”

Jim and Charlotte purchased Wild Time from Letourneau and stepped in as owners that year. Aside from their experience with Parrot-fan-alia and a few college jobs working at department stores, Charlotte and Jim say they were new to organizing merchandise in a brick-and-mortar store.

“When we first took the store, we knew retail, but we never set up a store. We didn’t know what to do,” says Charlotte. “Kelly sold down most of her merchandise, took some of her fixtures with her so we were kind of like, ‘Oh boy, what have we done?’”

Fortunately, Jim’s father spent his entire career managing various department stores. Charlotte and Jim asked him to assist them with organizing the store and give them some pointers. Within a matter of minutes, he helped them to rearrange the racks and displays to create clear, navigable pathways in the store.

“He said to weave this and make rows; he shuffled racks around. It was just some little tweaks that he made that made all the difference in the world!” Jim recounts.

When taking over the store, Charlotte adds that they also tweaked the name a little by adding “Caribbean Trading Co.” to the end to give it more of an island boutique feel.

And since both Jim and Charlotte had experience as accountants, she says they made sure the store was using QuickBooks and updated its point-of-sale system when they stepped in as owners.

Jim says they didn’t want Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co. to be “just another T-shirt shop,” either so they focused on finding unique, upscale gifts that tourists could take home with them.

“They only had a few vendors at the time, mainly Life is Good and Margaritaville,” Charlotte explains. “We realized that we’re in a big tourist area, but we didn’t want just generic tourist stuff so we looked for upscale tourist stuff. We try to have something for all tastes and all ages.”

Original Florida finds

Although many coastal gift shops focus on selling name-drop merchandise, Charlotte and Jim generally try to steer clear of that at Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co.

“We’re unusual from probably a lot of other stores,” Jim says. “They probably all have name drops. We don’t. We tried name drops, but it didn’t work.”

But what does work is specific brands. Charlotte and Jim say many customers love to shop for Life Is Good or Sea Dog apparel at their store. The seaside retailer also carries Margaritaville-licensed items and Jeep-branded items.

Charlotte says Life Is Good products make up about 50% of the store’s sales. But what comes second is a mix of just about all other brands and products in the store.

The retailer carries a variety of apparel from primarily wholesale vendors, including West Indies Wear, Charlie Paige, Viv&Lou, Brief Insanity fun pajama bottoms, Flojos Sandals, Tidewater Sandals and Tormenter SPF clothing. Being by the beach, Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co. offers plenty of beach-themed gifts from wholesalers such as Cape Shore, Sincere Surroundings and more as well as fun beach jewelry like Fahlo tracking bracelets or Wellington Michael jewelry.

The retailer also has some locally made products, such as Florida Salt Scrubs and some locally written books and artwork.

As big pet lovers, Charlotte and Jim say they also make sure to carry pet-themed items, such as dog and cat kitchen towels, pet-themed socks and notepads. They also change up merchandise for Christmas and always make sure to stock Enesco Impossible Dreams Tropical Collector Santas for that time of year.

To keep with the Jimmy Buffett vibe, the retailer also sells a Tiki Toss hook and ring game with a sample set up outside the store for customers to test.

Charlotte says she loves that her staff is able to sell a wide variety of merchandise every single day at the store.

“Sales are spread out among all the vendors,” she says. “That’s credit to the great sales staff I have. They sell a little bit of everything every day, which is great.”

Tables, chairs and smiles

Standing out from all the other tourist shops was one of the first challenges Charlotte noticed when she and Jim took over ownership of Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co.

“One of the big challenges was people would open the door, look in and say, ‘Oh, it’s just another T-shirt shop. Let’s keep going,’” she recalls. “We had to really figure that out. How do we stop that?”

To break free from the “T-shirt shop” stigma, Charlotte says she purchased a Margaritaville table from a Margaritaville Resort store and placed it at the front of the store to display items — cups, koozies and notepads. She says that simple table solution helped to catch customers’ eyes and get them to browse the store for longer.

Early on, the retailer also had the challenge of attracting customers to venture past a strip mall of stores across the street to Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co.

“We weren’t getting the traffic that we need,” Charlotte explains. “We thought, ‘How can we get them to come across the street?’”

After sitting on the problem for a while, Jim and Charlotte came up with the idea to set up a giant beach chair outside the building to catch peoples’ attention. The chair was immediately a hit and has been in front of the store for at least the past 10 years.

“People love it,” Charlotte says. “They sit in it, slide back in it, laugh, take pictures. Then they come up into the store. They realize it’s a cool store.”

On top of just being a “cool store,” Charlotte and Jim make sure the store gives each customer a great experience.

“Our biggest thing I would say that I promote is customer service,” Charlotte says. “Coming from retail back in the day, you didn’t just stand behind the register. You walked around, worked the customers. I tell [our] girls, ‘Greet everybody. Talk to them. Listen to them.’ They’ll remember that experience and they’ll come back.”

The focus on customer service has paid off for the seaside retailer, too. Charlotte says vacationers returning to John’s Pass remember their time at Wild Time Caribbean Trading Co.

“We’ve built up a following where people say this is the first store they hit up when they come to town. I really credit that to the products, but a lot to the experience they have when they come in. Acknowledge everybody and treat them like you’d want to be treated. I think that’s the most important thing, along with the products we carry.”