“You see them all over most major coastal beaches during the summertime.”A Tommy Bahama beach chair in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. Tommy Bahama doesn’t make its chairs and beach goods. Instead, Tommy Bahama licenses its name and design for the beach goods and receives royalties from sales at retailers. So they came up with “‘Tommy Bahama’ because I liked the resonation of the two words together.”The founders had recently left the company, and the country was suffering through the Great Recession, which dragged down Tommy Bahama sales. Correction: Tommy Bahama CEO Doug Wood said the company sells up to two million of its beach chairs a year and 700,000 umbrellas annually.

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