SilverChicks and the African Trade Beads

Many, many of you know the story of how SilverChicks.com became entangled in the web of Trade Beads, but for those of you who do not, I thought that I would share.

Let me start with the SilverChicks story....

Valissa and I went on vacation together during the summer of 2002. We had been long time friends at that point and we had both just moved to new homes, and we had just developed the beading bug... We both liked to make jewelry, but everytime we went to a retail store to buy beading supplies we had severe sticker shock and put our heads together to figure out how to buy beads for a better price, quality sterling silver and fancy findings.

So, we did the research, figured out how and where to buy beads to make our jewelry with - and then needed to figure out what to do with the extra beads (we were buying bulk). And that is how SilverChicks made their debut on eBay in August 2002. We would literally buy sterling silver beads and real gemstone beads, make a piece of jewelry and then post the extra beads. What shocked us was the positive response, it encouraged us to keep going, and by December 2002 we were pulling our hair out trying to make it all work and keep up with the holiday eBay purchases. The tricky part for us, has always been, that we have been running our business from two different geographical locations. At that time, one of us was in Monterey, California and the other Houston, Texas.

In January 2003 we launched our website. It was small, but oh so beautiful. Our friend and brilliant artist, Chris Cart developed our site. We continued to be shocked by our success. Here we were, two terribly busy mommies, running a successful website and providing our families with some serious fun money. Who would have guessed?

In July 2003, I left for Africa, wished Valissa luck with the website and continuing to grow our business. She kept on trucking, developing relationships with hoity toity boutiques and creating a massive and loyal following.

I landed in Ethiopia, and literally the same week started looking for beads. What a change from the sterile bead markets Valissa and I have visited. The beads were DIRTY, the prices weren't set, and according to every bead dealer they were all as precious as diamonds. When I realized none were actually .925 sterling and all of the bead dealers told me that they were all hundreds of years old, I thought, "Not interested.".

Within a month, I went on a shopping trip with a number of other ex-pats, and remember now to my chagrin, saying to one lovely, willing to mentor, true bead collector, "Those are NOT silver", when she was looking at telsum. I was just not feeling the love.

Then, I met CHEVRONS. I had been seeing eye beads and feather beads, annulars, and vaseline beads almost everywhere that I went, copal/amber/plastic - you name it, but I hadn't seen any marvelous chevrons. When I did, I was a convert. I went crazy on bead research, most of it painfully done on dial-up internet connections that easily timed out. I started going to the bead shops with a notebook and writing down what the dealers told me, I learned to haggle, and I learned to dig in and get dirty and scrounge, literally, for beads. I was a BELIEVER!

And, that is how we came to be converts to African Bead people. Once I developed a taste for it, I spent hours and hours in bead shops, looking at them, taking my bead books in and cataloging them, thinking about them....

That is the story behind our love affair with Trade Beads.