Purebeads: About Me

I'm a 58-year-old single man living in Rhode Island. I love poetry and have tried for years to write good poetry, but without much success (according to the people who read it). I'm concerned about the environment, justice, racial equality, and the fair distribution of wealth. I worked as a legal secretary and word-processing operator for more than 25 years. About 23 years ago I designed necklaces, most of which were (I admit) sold by my mother in the cafeteria of her company. When my mother retired, the jewelry business dried up. That was before the internet.

I have loved colorful jewelry since I was small. I remember buying my mother a multi-colored rhinestone brooch which I thought was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She made a show of wearing it out one evening, but I'm quite sure she slipped it into her purse as soon as she was out the door. It was very gaudy.

In mid-2002 I took a job with a demanding boss who criticized me no matter how hard I worked (that's a story in itself). I asked him if I could take a 30-minute lunch hour instead of an hour, the idea being to shorten my work day, and he said no. So I had to find something to do on that lunch hour. The office was situated 5 blocks from the costume-jewelry district and 5 blocks from the fine-jewelry district. On my lunch hours I found myself looking at beads and thinking about my previous experience as a jewelry designer. Before long, I was getting back to the office ten minutes late with bags of beads in my hands!

I am what you might call a "reluctant retailer". I buy beads for X amount of money and sell them for 2 times X (or more). It almost seems dishonest. Why, I wonder, shouldn't I just tell people where to get the beads themselves at wholesale prices? When I first started doing this, the retail business seemed like a big scam, but then I realized that retail has its place. Most people don't want to buy beads in wholesale quantities, and most wholesalers don't want to sell small quantities to the public – and thus the retailer is needed. If the retailer's markup is high, there is a reason for that also: It takes much more work to sell small quantities to the public than it does to sell large quantities to other businesses, as wholesalers do. Retailers charge a high markup because of the work involved.

My Philosophy as a Seller
I try to make the buying experience as pleasant as possible for my customers. I know how annoying it is to get defective beads, to get beads which were misrepresented or don't match the picture, and to have to pay for return shipping when it's not your fault that you need to return the beads. That's why:
(1) I do my best to post good pictures;
(2) I state the condition of the beads clearly on the site;
(3) I have low shipping charges;
(4) If some beads are defective, I reduce the price or include extra beads or eliminate the defective beads before shipping (if defects are over 5%);
(5) I do not have a restocking fee.
(6) I pay for return shipping and give you a refund of your original shipping charge if you feel that my pictures don't represent the beads accurately.

It is easy to be a good seller when your product is beads. Beads are small and inexpensive to ship. They rarely get damaged in the mail, and few people bother to return them when they aren't happy with them. Given how easy it is to be a good bead-seller, I wonder why more sellers don't have customer-friendly policies.

My Bead Choices

I tend to focus on machine-made beads rather than hand-made beads. There are several reasons: first, they are less expensive. Second, there is great consistency from one bead to the next, unlike lampwork or semiprecious beads. The Czech Republic is the leading manufacturer of glass beads these days. With the exception of individual lampwork craftsmen, very few beads are being manufactured in the United States. Czech beads are attractive and cheap. Beads are also made in China, India, Japan, Italy and Austria. Italian ("Venetian") beads are very expensive. Indian beads should be less expensive than Czech beads, but they aren't, and they are not always well-made. Most of the beads made in Japan are seed beads, which I don't carry. In Austria there is Swarovski, the crystal company, whose beads are too expensive for me to carry. In the Czech Republic there is one company which leads the others in bead output, and their beads are carried by most suppliers. Most of my beads are made by that company. As I get further into the business, I'll find other sources.