A bright idea: turning liquor bottles into lamps
The newest venture of the enterprising Shane Belanger of Westerly is upcycling upscale liquor bottles by transforming them into one-of-kind lamps. He’s been selling them since mid-November at the Stonington Velvet Mill’s indoor flea market.
Never one to stay still for long, Belanger, 38, was born in Virginia, grew up in Westerly, and worked in a variety of jobs from carpentry to bartending to creating an Internet start- up company.
His eclectic, entrepreneurial career path took him to Florida, New Hampshire and Alaska before returning to his local roots.
“I learn something and keep on pushing forward,” Belanger says. “I don’t like routine. I need to break it up.”
The concept for Belanger’s premium label liquor bottle lamps harkens back to his college days at Worcester Polytechnic Institute where he earned a degree in engineering.
“We were burning a lot of incense in our dorm rooms and the incense burners were making a mess. I thought of using liquor bottles so all the ashes stayed in the bottle,” Belanger explains.
“He got his empty bottles for free from the various Frat houses on campus and taught himself how to cut glass, and with a Dremel and a drill he crafted incense burners out of bottles in his dorm room that he then sold to students.
After graduating college, Belanger didn’t think about making the incense burners for more than nine years, while living in Alaska. When he returned to Rhode Island, he began working at the Ocean House in Watch Hill and was amazed by the volume of wine and liquor bottles being thrown away every night.
“It kind of blew my mind,” Belanger says. “I asked the wine director if I could take the bottles that they were going to throw away anyway. Pretty soon I had over 600 bottles in my basement.”
Belanger started making and selling his incense burners again two winters ago.
“Lamps weren’t even on my radar at that point,” he says. “I would make an extra $200 a week going around with my girlfriend selling them, mainly walking in the door of smoke shops in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
“So then, I got the idea, ‘What if I could turn a bottle into a lamp?’” he continues. “Sure enough there was a kit at Wal-Mart with all the electrical parts. All I had to do was drill a hole. I ran home as quick as I could, built the lamp, and sold it to a friend that night!”
Belanger moved to Newport and decided to sell the business.
“I threw it on Craig’s List and a guy bought it — all the bottles and materials — and I taught him how to make the incense burners.”
This summer Belanger started working at The Sea Goose Grill & Raw Bar in Westerly and building up his stash of bottles again.
“It’s a higher end bar, and I started taking in four or five bottles a night,” he says. “I managed to source all the parts in bulk and in October I started manufacturing the lamps and selling them.”
Belanger makes his decorative lamps from mostly premium liquor bottles as well as champagne bottles. No matter the bottle, he charges $40 with a shade and $30 without a shade.
He says he started out slow during the holiday season at the Velvet Mill and then his sales began to take off.
“At first women were buying them for their husbands,’ boyfriends,’ fathers’ man caves, whatever,” Belanger says. “A couple of women bought them for themselves. And as word was getting out, more people started coming in and buying them as gifts.”
“I’m getting the bottles for free — I’m still getting a lot from The Ocean House,” he says, noting that another selling feature of the lamps is that “Everyone wants things that are repurposed or recycled.”
Belanger says he can never tell what’s going to sell, which is why he has so much inventory and kinds of lamps.
“Most people look at a bottle and it brings them back to a certain time — their type of liquor,” he says. “I get a lot of requests for custom lamps, but I try to stay away from that. I don’t want this to become a full-time job. It’s my hobby, I enjoy it, and it helps me de-stress.”
Next on tap This past May, Belanger founded a community website: Westerly Life. com, which promotes area events and local businesses from Mystic to Charleston, Rhode Island.
He quit bartending in October to focus on his website.
In November, Belanger also published (with the help of a ghostwriter) an e-book, “The Ultimate Guide to Great Table Service,” which he says is written for people in the restaurant/bar business.
“It’s based on my 20 years of experience in fine dining and fun kinds of bars and how to be a consistent 20 percent server. Tips are all based on how the guest feels at the end of the night. And if you screw up, how was the screw- up handled? I’ve made some amazing money as a server and bartender all over the world.”
Belanger’s book is available in Kindle format on Amazon.com and he is currently working on two more books about his experiences as a server.
His goal is to get his website off the ground and going strong by the end of 2016, and then reevaluate whether to hire people for the dayto-day operations or to sell it.
“I love traveling, ultimately,” he says. “I look at my past and everything works out. It’s amazing. Ninety percent of life is just showing up.”