Fwd: The $255 Beach Shade Dividing America’s Coastal Towns - WSJ
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Subject: The $255 Beach Shade Dividing America’s Coastal Towns - WSJ
The $255 Beach Shade Dividing America’s Coastal Towns
Some beachgoers love Shibumis for their simplicity and safety. Others consider them a nuisance, and some places have banned them.
By Fred A. Bernstein
May 23, 2026 at 5:30 am ET
Fans of Shibumis say they are easy to carry and set up and are safer than umbrellas. SHIBUMI
If you’re lucky enough to own an oceanfront house in Wrightsville Beach, you’ll look out on the sand, the water and—starting this weekend—an endless stretch of blue and turquoise fabric. In this North Carolina town, Shibumis, lightweight shade structures that flap in the wind like giant flags flown horizontally, are everywhere.
“When I see them popping up on the sand, it means everyone is back here enjoying the beach,” Wrightsville homeowner Tracy Dix said contentedly.
But don’t try planting a Shibumi on the sand in Myrtle Beach, S.C. From now until Labor Day, the only shade structures permitted in that resort town are traditional umbrellas. “The beach was being consumed by tents and canopies,” said Mayor Mark Kruea. “They blocked access to the beach for some folks, and potentially to emergency responders.”
In fact, when some residents proposed relaxing the rules for quieter beaches away from Myrtle’s main commercial strip, the Beach Advisory Committee voted unanimouslynot to allow that.
At a public hearing last month, Nan Trout, who lives near the beach, presented the committee with a long list of reasons to keep the ban in place. Among them: congestion that leads to “conflicts over territory, and the possibility that guy lines and anchors will cause many people to trip.
Trout said she talks to her neighbors and “none of them want to see Shibumis on the beach.”
If you can’t imagine a four-pound shade structure causing so much dissension, you’ve probably never seen a Shibumi. Breathtakingly simple, it consists of a polyester sheet that is slid onto an arch-shaped aluminum pole, the ends of which are then buried in the sand. In even a light breeze the polyester billows, like a bedsheet on a clothesline, providing enough shade for a family.
Invented by a trio of recent UNC-Chapel Hill graduates, Shibumis are practically an obsession in the Carolinas. Owners say they are easy to carry and set up and are safer than umbrellas, which can cause injuries or death when the wind uproots them. The company says it has sold about 500,000 Shibumis, many of them in the Carolinas.
The device has enriched its inventors, brothers Dane and Scott Barnes and their friend Alex Slater. (Shibumi is a Japanese term for “effortless perfection” as well as the name of an apartment building where the three men lived in Chapel Hill.) In 2021, just six years after they made their first Shibumi by hand, they accepted an offer from Stripes, a New York-based investment fund, for majority ownership. They remain board members, brand ambassadors and strategic advisers.
Not surprisingly, there are copycats, some sold right alongside Shibumis on Amazon. The company has sent cease-and-desist letters citing the company’s 15 U.S. patents to nearly 200 competitors, and sued two of them, according to Dane Barnes.
Barnes said he spends much of his time dealing with imitators and lobbying in places where shade structures like Shibumis are prohibited.
In Rehoboth Beach, Del., Beach patrol captain Jeff Giles said the shades were simply taking up too much space on the town’s relatively narrow swaths of sand. Now they’re illegal year-round. “Beach ambassadors” are sent to talk to violators, Giles said. If someone refuses to take down their shade, he said, “We call the police and they issue a ticket.”
There are criticisms that go beyond crowding and safety. Some beachgoers say that when they flap in the wind, Shibumis are so loud that it’s hard to hold a conversation under or even near one. That’s why the company spent years looking for a fabric that makes new models less noisy than their predecessors.
Another refrain is that Shibumis are useless in still air. There are plenty of videos on TikTok showing “Shibumi fails” on windless beaches. In response, the company introduced a wind-assist kit—a pair of cables, clips and sandbags that can keep the fabric from drooping.
Then there’s the sameness problem. To build brand recognition, the founders for years stuck with a single color scheme—“deep ocean and shallow water.” But some parents complained that their children couldn’t find them in a sea of identical Shibumis, Barnes said. There are now several color combinations.
And some consumers are put off by the price—at least $255 for a product that they imagine costs a fraction of that to make. (Production was moved from the U.S. to Asia in 2024.) There are lots of videos online demonstrating how to make a “Shibumi” with $50 or $60 worth of materials.
The company is trying to expand well beyond the Carolinas, but that will require some heavy lifting. In places like Wilmington, N.C., Dick’s Sporting Goods stores have large displays of Shibumis. But at a Dick’s in Huntington Beach, Calif., in March, no one had heard of a Shibumi and it took a while to find a few gathering dust on a shelf in the back.
Meanwhile, the company is looking for more than new territory. Last year it came out with a pricey beach chair that it says is selling well. This year it introduced a canopy meant to be used in parks and yards, where there may not be much wind.
That market may prove to be enormous. There are millions of backyards in America, and none of them prohibits sun shades.
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/shibumi-beach-sun-shade-04770fbaSent from my iPhone
