On arrrrr way back from Beaufort Pirate Invasion, I decided to visit Dolly Parton's Pirate Voyage in Myrtle Beach.  They ordered a number of pirate tricorn hats from us when it they be opening up.  They had two shows on Sunday day, 6pm & 8:30pm.  We made it to the later one.  It cost $50 per person for the regular seats on the end, and $5 more the the seats in the middle, which Dead Red N Tiger Lee chose.  Overall the place was huge n' well decorated.

You had to get there an hour earlier than the show to get the pre-show.  This allows you to be entertained, but mostly so you had time to buy stuff from the bar (expensive), gift shop (nothing really good) or face painting section (mostly for the kids).  

The outfits were OK, very color coordinated for the two sides, the men's blue team and the women's red team.  Each side of the place cheered for their side, so as to get more audience participation. The outfit were mostly out of spandex, due to the fact that most of them ended up in the water at the end of each act. It was similar to other dinner shows like Medieval Times, but it contained much more acrobatics, similar to Cirque du Soleil in its coordinated performance. Overall I was pleasantly entertained.  My main disappointment was the food, very insitutional, like you would get in a military mess hall.

It be way better than the Pirate's Dinner Adventure in Orlando, which I was not impressed at all with, arrrrgh!  In think since Dolly Parton owns it n' has a background in entertainment, that she truly wanted to provide a good show instead of setting up a tourist trap to collect money. 

Most of the wooden tallships we currently see today are US make from around the war of 1812.  Rarely do we see one of an earlier time era of a non-British country.  So it be a delight to see a Spanish Galleons Andalusia or treasure ship that us pirates would love to plunder.  It be used in one of the episodes in the first season of Black Sails.

So when ever a new tall ship be visiting arrrr home port of Tampa Bay, I like to bring some of my newest krewe members to visit.  Some of the black powder weapons seen on Black Sails come from arrrrr shop.

Why in the heavens would Tiger Lee travel to the far side of the world to India? Since the begin of Pirate Fashions, we have tried to make n' buy as much pirate clothing, accessories and weapons from the New World, with 30% of it come right from inside the store itself. So more than half of arrrr products come from overseas either directly from manufactures or from USA distributors that import from overseas. I have always paid my workers only a bid more than min. wages, but if I wish to keep them in the long term, I will need to paid a better wage. 

For the past 2 year, I have been trying to find sewing factories in the USA to produce some of the clothing we currently make, but found none that would work. I decided to explore the possible dealing directly with Indian clothing factories, to have them make items that I am already getting from overseas, but with a high quality and in my own designs. Higher quality but at a lower price, how can that be done? By eliminating the middle man distributors. The main issue is high quantity are required, which means big initial orders and carry inventory for a longer period of time. This is how the larger companies such as Museum Replica does it. 

It will take 4 or 5 year to move half of our production to India. Half of our productions will still be from the USA. I like to be up front with my customers. I had to travel over to India n'personally visit n' talk to the owners of many different factory to feel comfortable with this option. I found that like anywhere else there are both good and bad business, which is very hard to tell by visiting a website. I have found that Indian company can do a great job copying something. So when they have been giving poorly designed garment, they will do a excellent job of reproducing it, which results in a cheap garment, because the distributor wanted a cheaper price. Since I am going to eliminate the middle man, I can ask for the highest quality garment and it will still be cheaper that what I normally have to paid for a poorly designed garment. It will take about 6 months before we will have any new pirate garb in stock from this trip. 

You can follow a day to day travelog of this long and interesting trip on this Tiger Lee's Facebook page starting on April 21. We do all this to get you the best pirate garb in the world, new or old.