Quartz Obsession/Stacy Conradt: 🗽Souvenirs: Little mementos = big business

Quartz Obsession
Souvenirs
April 13, 2018
A novel(ty) idea

Vacations are expensive. A typical US family of four spends about $4,580 to get away from it all for a few days—even a single Spring Breaker will likely spend in excess of $1,000. And while you can’t put a price tag on experiences, culture, or memories, you can put them on the knick-knacks we take home with us.

In 2013, travelers spent a collective $2.3 billion on souvenirs, and 427 million hours choosing them. However much we’ve shelled out on the trip itself, it seems there’s always a little room in the budget and the suitcase for a travel memento.

Whether your souvenir Achilles’ heel is decorative flatware, commemorative plates, pewter thimbles, or another type of charmingly useless flotsam, there’s something in a gift shop with your name on it. (Sometimes literally.)

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Reuters/Christian Hartmann
By the digits

$30 million: Annual revenue generated by “I ❤ NY” products

13: Tons of mini Eiffel towers seized by Paris police when they arrested an unlicensed vendor

11,100: Tons the actual Eiffel tower weighs

13: Episodes of Wonderfalls, a 2004 TV show by Bryan Fuller about a clerk at the Niagara Falls gift shop who realizes the souvenirs can speak to her.

60 feet: Height of “Eli’s Orange World,” an orange-shaped tourist stand in Orlando that sells a mind-boggling variety of souvenirs and citrus fruits.

84 million: Number of Mickey Mouse ears sold since Disneyland opened in 1955

2: Number of broken teeth suffered by Italian president Silvio Berlusconi in 2009 when a man threw a small metal souvenir of Milan’s city cathedral at his face. (Sales of the souvenir reportedly skyrocketed afterward.)
Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi
Origin story
Starting to collect

Collecting objects that remind us of our journeys has undoubtedly been part of human nature for centuries, but CityLab theorizes that, in the US anyway, the modern-day obsession took root with the advent of railroads. When so many parts of the world became accessible, middle-class travelers were able to go more places, more often—and they wanted proof of their adventures.

Some tourists simply chiseled off chunks off whatever monument or attraction they were visiting. Early souvenirs were relics, as William Bird, the curator emeritus for the Smithsonian Institute told CityLab, “fragments of much larger things that formed a ‘transcendental attachment’ to the places that people visited.”

With the realization that visitors were destroying the attractions, the first conservation measures were enacted. But the newly mobile public now had a thirst, and vendors quickly sprung up to quench it. In particular, the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago really got Americans worked up into a trinket tizzy: A majority of its 27 million visitors took something home to help them remember the fantastic events. It was that particular Expo that birthed “the Golden Age of souvenir spoons.”
Pop quiz
In the early 1800s, tourists were given a hammer to chip off a souvenir piece of what?
The Colosseum
The Sphinx
The Great Wall of China
Plymouth Rock
If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email.
Economy of kindness

In Japan, gifting souvenirs to friends and family when you return home is deeply ingrained. The practice, called “omiyage,” is most often (but not limited) to food items that can only be found in the regions visited. The practice is so widespread that omiyage comes specially packaged in gift shops and airports, in brightly colored boxes that often contained individually wrapped snacks meant for dispersing to colleagues and family members. A study found that Japanese travelers spent an average of $566 on gifts for others when they traveled; 45% bought presents for 15 or more people.
Reuters/Suhaib Salem

Vendors sell souvenirs at Mount Al-Noor in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
Fun fact!
The Latin origin of the word souvenir is “subvenire,” which means “occur to the mind.” In French, it translates to “to remember.”
Charted
China’s role in tourism

Tourists from China spend more money overseas than travellers from any other country, and in 2016 they spent twice the amount Americans shelled out abroad, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (pdf).

And more than other travelers, Chinese tourists prioritize shopping abroad. They spent US $355 billion on overseas retail in 2017 according to Skift, a number that’s projected to climb to $422 billion by 2020. While non-Chinese tourists spend an average of USD $486 per person shopping on trips, according to Nielsen, Chinese tourists average USD $762.

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Shake it off

Austrian inventor Edwin Perzy created the snow globe in 1900, and today, the third generation of Perzys are still making the enchanting knick knacks for collectors across the world.
Quotable
“It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.”

—novelist Anatole France
Back to basics
The time the US president sold chunks of the White House for profit
(Stacy Conradt)

During US president Harry Truman’s administration, the White House was in such a poor state of repair that his daughter’s piano fell through the floor. The interior had to be completely gutted, creating literally tons of debris and scraps. More than 20,000 enterprising Americans saw the demolition as the perfect opportunity for souvenir-hunting, writing the White House to request everything from wallpaper to doorknobs. In response, the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion created 13 “authenticated memento kits” for public purchase.

Whether they preferred a “small piece of old metal” or “enough stone for a fireplace,” the ultimate American souvenir cost citizens nothing but shipping and processing costs. Kit #1, “enough old pine,” was a favorite—5,059 of them were sold for $2.00 each. When all was said and done, the fundraising effort resulted in an extra $10,000 for renovations.
Giphy
Poll
Souvenirs: Waste of money or priceless reminder?
No more snow globes!
Souvenir shopping is the best part of the trip
My magnet collection isn’t going to grow itself
The fine print

In yesterday’s poll about “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” 73% of you said your favorite version is by Marvin Gaye.

Today’s email was written by Stacy Conradt, edited by Jessanne Collins, and produced by Luiz Romero.
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