Seashells Are Dealer’s Oyster : Professional Obsession Grew From Hobby to Major Import Business
Ralph Ferguson of Wilmington is a living tongue twister: He sells seashells by the seashore.
His decades-old business less than a mile from the Port of Los Angeles is a shrine to the mollusk. And Ferguson, a portly 60-year-old fond of seashell print shirts, is a sheller extraordinaire.
What began as a youthful hobby in the 1940s has grown into a professional obsession--Ferguson’s Marine Specialties, an import-export business that grosses about $600,000 a year and is one of the nation’s largest wholesale seashell businesses, according to those in the industry.
“I collected stamps before I knew what a seashell was,” Ferguson said. “I still have the stamp collection but I never look at it. Shells, they’re different. They were once alive. They’re just like fingerprints--every one is different.”
Seashells--packaged in crates, cardboard boxes and burlap sacks--arrive daily at Ferguson’s shop from Mexico, South Africa, Indonesia and other parts of the world. They are sorted, cleaned, packaged and rerouted to retail shops, interior decorators, clothing designers, craft makers and schools.
Ferguson grew up around the sea, working in fishing boats in Northern California as a boy and later spending four years in the Navy. His shell collection grew steadily over the years, and those who saw his conchs, murex and other shells inevitably asked if they could buy a few.
Ferguson became a full-time shell dealer after he left the Navy in 1954, traversing beaches in Mexico and Southern California during low tide in search of starfish and shells. He became president of the Long Beach Shell Club in 1965, a post he has held on and off since then, and four years later he started his import-export business on an industrial stretch of Friers Avenue.
Ferguson does not leave his shells behind at the end of the workday.
He lives next door to his warehouse in a home decorated with shell clocks, shell paintings, shell ornaments and just plain shells.
His business has become a family affair. One daughter, Mary Alvarado, works in the shell warehouse handling customer calls, and another, Lupe Delatorre, runs a Marina del Rey shell shop called Shells Etc. Ferguson has a staff of 14 workers, and his young grandchildren occasionally help out at the sorting table as well.
The briny smell of the sea hits visitors the moment they enter Ferguson’s shop. Once inside, Ferguson says, shell-shocked customers’ jaws usually drop, and they stare at the shelves and shelves of shells.
“People are amazed when they come in here,” he said. “They usually just stand for a while and stare.”
There are seashell wind chimes flapping at the front door, seashell earrings on the jewelry rack, seashell night lights and other assorted knickknacks. In the rear are bins and bins of wholesale shells--ring-top cowries, white moon snails, Florida fighting conchs and about 2,000 other varieties that range in size from the tiny Mexican white rice shells to a 400-pound giant clam shell from the Philippines. Prices vary from 50 cents a pound for fighting conchs to $250 for a golden cowrie.
Shells, Ferguson will tell you, are really just the outer skeleton of mollusks, formed naturally as the creatures grow. Shells vary in color, texture and design, and they can be left- or right-handed, depending on where the opening is located.
Ferguson’s customers include Brigham Young University, which stocks its science labs with shells, and the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, which used shells as decorations during its grand opening. Another hotel chain bought thousands of shells, which Ferguson is still gathering, to place on guests’ pillows instead of mints. He also supplies gift shops in Hawaii, Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles with bags of shells for tourists.
“People just love shells,” said Albert Jeffries, a Northridge businessman who buys Ferguson’s shells for crafts. “They’re natural and it reminds people of the ocean.”
“Shells have so much variety,” said Bernadine Hughes, a shell collector from Los Alamitos who frequently browses in Ferguson’s shop. “They have personalities. I marvel every day at the intricate designs. . . . I had to build an addition on my home to handle all my shells.”
