This morning we received the following email from a new customer who allowed us to share it here!

Received today wow your fast  "Awesome totems they are like bookends to my Tropical Hawaiian Get Away" Thank you so very much I highly recommend you to anyone that's looking for that extra touch. I will order again I have attached photos as they look in their new home. LOVE THEM!!!
Terry & Jackie Curtin

I spoke to a couple last week who are moving soon and want to find a good home for a large tiki statue that is in their back yard. I asked for more details, and yesterday I received this email. Please contact Debora directly..

I believe my husband recently spoke to you about a tiki in our backyard. The tiki is about 10 feet tall.   When we bought tour house 19 years ago, we were told that the tiki was made of redwood and brought from the west coast on a flat bed truck. It is deeply embedded in the ground. The previous owners of the house were art collectors which makes me think that this tiki might have some value.  I have attached two photos of it.

We are selling our house in Mamaroneck, NY and moving shortly so we are eager to get this tiki appraised and sold as quickly as possible.  We don't really know where to begin.  If you have any ideas or contacts, I would very much appreciate your sharing them with me. 

I can be reached by email at debble4692@aol.com, or on my cell at (914) 419-3642.

Click on the pictures below for a larger view:

This afternoon we finally put the finishing touches on the first in a new series of videos showcasing our Tikis. Today's, on our front page, shows a selection of out Tiki statues.

Although we've tested in the common browsers, I'd love to hear if anyone has any issues playing it. Does it stutter or is it smooth? Does it play continuously through to the end? Leave comments below please!

Clicking the image below will take you the front page where you can view it..

We had a great time at the beach with family friends over the Fourth of July weekend, but coming home is always nice too, isn't it? After catching up on Monday, we're back up to full speed again now.

In perfect timing, I found another of the Tiki mugs I was looking for on eBay, and snapped that up. It's another from the Tommy Bahama annual series that I like. This one is the 2007 edition.

Of course, if you have any of this collection, or if you need any help picking out a Tiki for your collection, please let me know.

Next Tiki mug to arrive in my collection today was the lovely Tommy Bahama Kimono Lady 2002. Not strictly a "Tiki mug" I suppose, but I love the Hawaiian theme of this collection and hope to get more of the one-per-year Tommy Bahama mugs.

I also started listing my new collection on Ooga-Mooga, a great site for listing your Tiki mugs, and creating a wishlist of ones that you want. If another member puts one up for sale that is on your list you get notified. Very cool, and although I suspect I won't get any bargains that way (unlike buying from estate sales or ebay even) it's a great way to quickly find rare gems.

View my collection on Ooga-Mooga

I'd like to build a small-ish collection of nice vintage Tiki items, especially from old Tiki restaurants. So if you have anything please let me know.

I rummaged on ebay last night and found a couple of things and was lucky enough to buy them both. I'm still watching a few more that close later this week.

Here's my first purchase. I love this - no idea how old it is, but it certainly appears old from the crazed glaze in the closeups (not shown here). It's flying its way here now!

It was described as a "Rare VTG Retro Yellow Easter Island Tiki Vase/Planter":

"This vintage retro Easter Island Vase/Planter is in good condition. A happy, sunny bright yellow with a high gloss finish. It measures approximately 7" tall and 3 1/2" deep. Being old, it shows its age, and that is part of it's tremendous appeal. It is lightly crazed on the exterior, and deeply crazed on the interior. It has a tiny chip (very minor) on the lip as shown in the second photo."

Hey, my wife and I are visiting Northern California for 4 days at the end of August, leaving the kids with visiting grand-parents for a little break to our favorite area on the mainland.

So, I was thinking, where is the best Tiki-themed restaurant in or around San Francisco? We'll be driving the whole area, from Carmel up to Napa and inland to Sacremento, so it can be anyway in that area.

I'm thinking of The Tonga Room - any locals care to share better places to go?

Answers below please!

Here's an interesting call I had with a potential customer today. He called to ask;

"Your photos look great on your site, but do they really look like this, or are they photos of Tikis that have had a little more care and effort put into them?"

Which is a great question really. After all, I know some people are still quite nervous about shopping online. I've been to web sites myself where I take one look and say "no thanks". I'm sure you've seen them too, some sites just look a little too amateurish. If the website looks like it cost $100 to make, I'll keep my credit card in my wallet thank you!

Back to the point.

I've seen some pretty nasty Tikis in my time - they are made in Bali for $2 and look like they are worth every penny! It may be possible to take some nice photos of those from far enough away, I'm not sure. But we have our Tikis photographed professionally.

Here's an example, a Tiki totem that I bought myself out of our Hawaiian warehouse recently. In a lot of ways, it was a good test. I hadn't seen the actual Tiki before, hadn't hand-picked it, and I ordered it shipped just like any other order that day.

This is the largest photograph of the Tiki that we have on our site. Looks good, right? Made from Natural Acacia, it's the highest quality wood you can get your Tikis made from. (read more about this)

And here is my actual Tiki after it was taken from the box (and great packaging I have to say). I'm sure you'll agree that even though these two photographs were taken more than a year apart, my Tiki is as good or better than the original subject.

And here is a closer look at the detail:

I'm very pleased with it, and add our 100% money-back guarantee to the table and you have nothing to worry about! That's brings up a great point - did you know that..

...NO-ONE has EVER returned one of our Tikis?

My wife Tara confessed that she didn't know what to get me for Father's Day this year (aren't the kids supposed to buy me a present? hahahaha) - but would I like a nice Tiki?

Well, actually, I would! It may seem strange, but I haven't bought myself many of our really nice Tikis - some masks but never a nice Acacia Tiki Totem.

So, I browsed around and picked my favorite (actually my second favorite, I've always wanted a particular Tiki Statue but it went out of stock last week), and Tara ordered it - the last one it turns out.

So, here it is - but of course it's out of stock so you can't buy one :)

But this made me think that a Father's Day special offer is probably in order. So let's make one up. How about this - order anything from our store before Midnight on June 16th and use the coupon code Fathers2009 and get 10% off everything in your cart.

Now you have no excuse - and if your special guy is as stoked as me at getting my new Tiki you'll have a Happy Daddy-O!

Update: Mine arrived!

You are already reading our blog which is greatly appreciated, but did you know that we also "twitter"?

According to Wikipedia, Twitter is:

..a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers).

Since tweets are shorter, we tend to twitter more about what's going on here at Royal Tiki, random thoughts and occasionally special offers or short-term deals that we don't post about elsewhere.

Feel free to follow us at http://www.Twitter.com/RoyalTiki - we look forward to connecting!

Unfortunately our server went down for 8 hours on Memorial Day (the last day of our sale), so we have extended it one day. The sale will now end on May 26th.

We sincerely apologize for this downtime, it was an unfortunate set of circumstances that led to this. We've put new systems in place to help minimize the chances of it happening again!

The response to our sale over the last two weeks has been amazing; we really appreciate all our new customers and repeat customers that took advantage of our new low prices.

So we couldn't resist doing it again - yes, we're extending the sale for another two weeks!

We're confident that you won't find cheaper prices anywhere. Try it. If you can, our lowest price guarantee is STILL in effect. We have always said that if you find anything cheaper elsewhere, we will match the price and give you an extra 10% of the difference too!

May 8th 2009:

3 days to go - our sale ends on Monday May 11th at midnight! 10-40% off all products in our store, including:

• Indoor Tikis
• Tiki Statues
• Tiki Totems
• Hawaiian Tiki Masks
• Polynesian Tiki Masks
• Beach Decor
• Coastal Decor
• Tropical Decor

Our FREE Shipping is still in effect too. You may have missed Mother's Day, but you still have a chance to make your own little peice of Hawaii if you act quickly.

Remember, this sale ends at Midnight on Monday May 11th 2009!

April 27th 2009:

Our FREE Shipping is still in effect, but now for the next two weeks we're dropping our prices across the board - from 10% to 40% off everything. We must be crazy!!!

As an example, our 39 inch tiki masks have dropped $60 to $259 with free shipping throughout the USA. We guarantee that's the lowest price you'll find - anywhere.

Remember, this sale ends on May 11th 2009!

P.S. All our customers who ordered today, don't worry, you'll see these savings too in the form of a rebate to your credit card.

Spring is nearly here, and we're starting to get into the spirit by converting our entire site - all 800+ products - to FREE shipping. Yes, even the big beautiful tiki statues and tiki totems that cost upwards of $100 to ship - we pick up all the shipping and handling costs now.

A big thank you to our customers for giving us feedback about shipping costs - it's obvious since you mention it, but we needed a little shove!

If there's anything else we can do to improve our site or help you choose, please let us know.

Aloha!

For the 2008 Christmas holiday season we will be closed on December 25th and 26th, sitting around the fire having some well-deserved "ohana-time"!

Be aware that many of our distributors are closed through to the first week in January, so although you can place orders during that time delivery may be significantly delayed.

Thank you for your business and Mele Kalikimaka!

James and Tara Shaw

Bill Raftery has done a great job introducing a new product that we are proud to add to our site: Fred The Aku!

Styled after the famous Easter Island Moai, Fred is a blow-molded hollow plastic statue that you can fill with sand or water through a plugged hole in his back.

Standing just over 2 feet tall and weighing just 3 pounds, Fred is a lot easier to move around your yard or tiki bar than a stone or concrete version, that's for sure.

For more details visit Fred's product page.

While everyone relaxes and gets ready for cooler Fall weather we're not slowing down here at Royal Tiki!

We've just added 11 new categories, including Fijian Masks that contains 56 brand new masks. At the same lower price point of the Polynesian masks these Fijian masks finish off our mask collection with more unique designs. As well as the 8", 12" and 20" sizes that you are used to, Fijian masks also come in an impressive 40" size - and for around $70 that's a lot of mask for little money!

If you haven't visited the site in a while, please visit. We are very proud of our web site now with it's professional design and awesome search feature. Now you can type in whatever words you like, like pineapple or turtle and see pictures of all the products that match! This makes it super easy to find products that will fit your collection perfectly.

As always, don't hesitate to email or call us with any questions.

Thanks to Kemble Hildreth at Kaugg we have a new look!  This is the first professional web design we've had on our web site, and we love it.

Our own "home made" design was good enough to get us going, but no-one here will mind me saying that it was never very pretty!

We'll be putting the finishing touches on the design by improving certain pages like the product pages over the next week, but hopefully you won't notice any problems. Please let us know if you do!

Take a read about Tiki Daddy's plight after he carved some Tikis into the palms outside his house..

Apparently, oceanside city officials aren't too happy about this "defacing of public property".

We just added two new products into our Indoor Tiki Statues category - both sets of our already popular Tikis.

Available in two sizes, 8" and 12" tall, these are hand-carved in Hawaii and made from Hibiscus. Super nice, well-detailed and sure to please anyone that you buy these for!

And of course, the sets are priced well below what you would pay individually.

Click on the image below to view our 12" set...

Over the weekend we made some major changes to our web site to make it simpler to use and easier to find the premium Hawaiian Tikis that you want.

There were many small changes that had a big effect on the site, but we'd like to highlight a few new pages that we have added.

• You'll notice a new section at the top of the menu on the left; Best Selling Tikis. We'll be adding to this section later, but for now you can easily find Tikis for under $50 and a complete list of Tiki statues and Totems in one place under Hand-carved Tikis
• People have asked us about how to care for their Tiki, so we've written a few articles to address this;
• Our Outdoor Tikis are *made* for outside use
• Tiki Care - How to take care of your Tiki Statues, Totems and Masks

As always, we are interested in your opinions more than anything - our site has to work for YOU, not us. So, if you have a minute please drop us an email or call us toll-free at (800) 734 8952.

Here is a charity that contacted us recently. Royal Tiki is donating a margaritaville tiki bar sign for their silent auction to raise money for Camp Carefree..

The Parrot Heads of the Triad, a not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to assist in the community to work together for social, charitable, and educational purposes, have made a commitment to help Camp Carefree.

We will be raising money to help support Camp Carefree on July 26, 2008, from 2:00 - 8:00 PM at our annual fundraising event called "Slice of Island Life".  This event will be held at Big Dawg's Saloon, 755 Indeneer Drive, Kernersville, NC 27284.

Camp Carefree, located in Stokesdale, NC is a no-profit 501C(3)organization with the sole purpose of providing a free, one week camping experience for youngsters from our own community and neighboring states with specific health problems and disabilities. The program also includes camps for well siblings or chronically ill or disabled children and a week for those with disabled or seriously ill parent. Camp Carefree relies solely on community support and private donations.

Having just read again this excellent blog post on Humu Kon Tiki, I was prompted to reply..

I  enjoyed reading about your take on common Sushi and Tiki in The Way In Which Tiki Is Like Sushi - I kinda agree, but from my point of view it is very hard to be a seller of Tiki, even if Hawaiian-made and hard-carved, without feeling a little guilty.

With the plastic, sea-side souvenir-shop "tiki" it's easy to be critical - but when selling online no-one gets to see the guys out there carving the Tiki statues or totems. All you see is a website, and websites are..well it's hard to give a website "soul".

Maybe it's more possible with a personal blog - perhaps soul is another way of saying "personality" in this case - but websites selling Tiki as a business (yeah, not as a hobby) don't long survive if they give the impression of a "fun guy making Tiki".

Perhaps you are saying that there is no place for selling Tiki online, and that Tiki should remain a rare mystery for most people, only bought from remote villages. But I doubt that you're saying that. :) 

Regardless, I'm going to keep trying to spread the Tiki word - and sell some cool stuff along the way. At least I can sleep easy knowing that there's no plastic or balsa wood "tiki" on my site. Hey, couldn't resist replying to this, keep up the good writing.

P.S. TikiSushi.com is still available..great domain if I could think of a use for it!

Haha, couldn't resist linking to this blog I saw yesterday - parental advisory as he says - House of Parsons' found a hilarious religious spoof against Tiki.. here's a taste, read the rest by clicking the image..