Most tour groups have just 15 minutes for a souvenir mad grab before it’s back to sightseeing.
Despite reports of an empty downtown D.C. still gutted by the pandemic, the city’s souvenir shops see such deluges on a regular basis. The gift shop is a core component of the quintessential student trip, and D.C. trips are a year-round industry.
Peak season strikes during spring break and the first six weeks of summer, says Brooksie Robbins, vice president of North American Operations for EF Explore America, one of the many tour companies that were out shopping on a recent Tuesday. Between June and August, the company has thousands of students on hundreds of trips and tours in D.C.
On the same day, six tour buses were idling in front of another souvenir shop a few blocks north of the White House. A blond chaperone held the door open for her flock of tweens in matching red T-shirts commemorating the trip.
“This is what you’ve all been waiting for!” she chirped as they filed inside.
Students flooded in for merch — keychains, mugs, flags, ornaments — candy and soft drinks, or just a break in their educational agenda. And bucket hats. Lots of bucket hats. American flag ones, Washington, D.C. ones, political ones.
“This fits my personality,” one boy said, wearing a white bucket hat with Donald Trump’s name stitched across the front.
“Where’s the RFK Jr. stuff?” another student asked.
Trump visors and RBG bobbleheads
Back at I Love DC Gifts, Khalid Ismail said the best-selling item is a cherry blossom sweatshirt that says “Good Vibes.” Even in June — months after the city’s famously fleeting flowers have come and gone and daily temperatures approach 90 degrees — the sweatshirt dominates. Ismail said he’s never seen anything bewitch customers so fervently, although Trump merch is a close second: T-shirts with his mug shot and visors with fake orange hair flowing out the top.
“We have no horse in the race, politically. Like, we don’t care, but man — people love him,” Ismail said. “Anything Trump-themed, anything with his name on it … people are buying it.”
Luke Wilbur has noticed the same. Wilbur, 56, used to own Washington DC Gift Shop on Pennsylvania Ave. The pandemic forced him to close, and now he runs DCgiftShop.com. Although he tries to stock an equal amount of Republican and Democrat items, Wilbur sells significantly more of the former.
Wilbur’s not convinced that means much for the outcome of the presidential election. Only that “conservatives purchase more products by far,” he said.
Plus, “when Trump has rallies, they’re all wearing the hats,” Wilbur said. “He’s a marketer … I mean, Trump was selling water.”
Some souvenir purchasing behavior is seasonal. Across the street from the U.S. Treasury Building at White House Gifts, anything with eagles sells out around the Fourth of July. Christmas tree ornaments are hot year-round. So is anything with the presidential seal or the likeness of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“Even though she’s passed, everybody loves her,” the shop’s owner, Jim Warlick, said, pointing at an RBG bobblehead lined up alongside ones of America’s most famous presidents. “We’ve never had anything for a Supreme Court justice other than her. She’s just so popular.”
Warlick, 71, opened White House Gifts in 2008, a dream that stemmed from his interest in American history and entrepreneurship. There was also a fateful trip he took to D.C. when he was 12 and bought a bust of President John F. Kennedy.
“I said ‘One of these days, I’m going to live in Washington,’” Warlick remembered.
In his younger days, Warlick dropped in and out of college to work for political campaigns and elected officials, then realized he could make far more money selling campaign buttons. He expanded his offerings, making campaign posters and stickers, and eventually opened his first Washington gift shop in 1992.
Five presidents later, the American public is still hungry for patriotic merch. Our appetite for what to buy, however, has evolved. Postcards barely sell these days and political pins are out (because people don’t want to put holes in their clothing, Warlick guesses); pet gear and fast fashion sunglasses are king.
“Ten years ago, people didn’t buy socks, but they do now,” Warlick said alongside a rack of novelty pairs knit with famous faces. Counter to Ismail and Wilbur’s findings, Warlick’s supply of President Biden’s socks were sold out last week while his rival’s version remained plentiful.
Warlick also gets a different clientele than the other shops. More of his foot traffic comes from White House tour runoff than big bus loads.
“We get some,” he said of the bus business, but not as many as he could. Warlick said some shop owners with round-the-clock bus drop-offs “pay the bus drivers.” He said he’s been approached to go into deals with drivers, “but we can’t give away half of what we sell.”
Robbins, of EF Tours, said “there’s no financial relationship that we have with any of the gift shops” but that some are better suited for big bus groups than others. Shops need to have a “diversity of inventory,” including both snacks and souvenirs, maybe a bathroom and the infrastructure to handle and process a swarm of young adults.
I Love DC Gifts meets that criteria. The store is across the street from Ford’s Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was shot, and directly next door to the Petersen House, where he was carried after the assassination. Ismail motioned to a wall of tourist T-shirts. “We share walls with where Lincoln died,” he said.
That proximity alone isn’t enough to guarantee customers.
“Buses are stopping in front of us, but that doesn’t mean they’ll come to us,” Ismail said. “It’s the positivity from the bus drivers and tour guides, the relationships we built … we go to dinner with these people, we know their families.”
Warlick is doing fine without the bus business. White House Gifts averages 3,000 customers a day in the summer, and he’s knee-deep in side hustles.
For example, Warlick had five replica Oval Office structures built that he rents out to movie studios. One’s set up in a building around the corner from the gift shop. Customers who spend at least $50 in the store can have their photo taken behind the desk, or from a replica White House press briefing room at no charge.
Or the traveling exhibit he created about Kennedy, populated with historic artifacts Warlick bought at auction. Exhibits included one of Jackie’s bathing suits, one of JFK’s shaving kits and two of his limousines.
“It’s just part of preserving history,” he said.
History isn’t necessarily part of the equation for Ismail. He’s hooked on the chaos and joy of dealing with hoards of customers at I Love DC Gifts.
“It gives me a purpose for life … it gives me energy, like vigor, if that makes sense,” he said. “How many people live and die to have an opportunity like this?”
