Here Iam sitting with a glass of champagne celebrating that, 9 years today I opened the doors to my little gift shop in Milton nsw Australia. A quaint little village I have grown up in on the N.S.W south coast. ( three Hours drive south of Sydney)
As I remember, on that day I was up at the shop at 5am painting the walls and pricing all the stock. ( So little of it when I look back at photos.)
O what a journey it has been.
Tears, (after I broke the front window and it fell out onto the foot path on a busy market Saturday and proud moments. And certainly the many days that its all too hard! I have had the shop up for sale many at time when it all gets too much! It was a 5 year plan and here I still am 9 years later.
Trade show after trade show always looking for 'that' something different.
As I remember it was 3 years ago at a Sydney gift trade show that a lady stopped me and complemented me on the bracelet I was wearing.
I told her it was one I made after traveling thru Asia, buying silver beads on my journey.
She asked me if it was a Pandora bracelet. I said I don't know what you are talking about.
She convinced me to walk another two halls back and go and look at the Pandora Jewelery.
So as I remember the aching feet took me to a tiny stand where I first saw the most gorgeous beads I had ever seen in a glass box.
And that was just the beginning of a whole new journey in my life!
It was such a huge outlay for a little country store to invest in all these beads. I thought about it for at least 6 months. It was always niggling at me. So I robbed from 'Peter to pay Paul' and came up with the $2,000 outlay to get started.
I was so excited when the parcel arrived. I unpacked this lovely black shiny Pandora's box placed each bead in its little cube and placed it on my counter. Nobody even noticed it!
I didn't sell one piece of it for at least two weeks and I thought I had made a terrible mistake.
Then bit by bit they started to sell and interest was growing.
I remember two young ladies in their 20's coming in on a Saturday morning and one of the girls was like a young girl in a lolly shop. So excited to be looking at all these gorgeous beads.
Her friend seemed bored with it and we began talking. She said Pandora wasn't her thing and she was a Troll girl. I said whats a Troll girl? She explained that Trollbeads were along the same lines as Pandora and the concept was established by Artists in the Netherlands in 1976.
Curiosity got the better of me and that evening I was typing into google - Trollbeads.
And bingo their was another addiction!
They were a similar concept to Pandora but so different! Made by artists and each bead had its little own story. Taking its inspiration, from mythology, astrology, fairy tales, fauna, flora, cultural diversity, and last but certainly not least, in the familiar things of everyday living.
So over the next 6 months or so I juggled between the two learning the codes and names of each beads.
Then somewhere I heard some one say the name Bacio.
And their I was again at home typing into Google - Bacio
More beads from Italy. So different but a similar concept.
I was finding my customers were fascinated with them all like I was.
Then came Biagi, Tedora, Lovelinks and Chamilia.
Thousands of beads all in my little shop. Codes and names that I was filing into my brain.
In one dream I organised helicopters to them in by the crate full and in another dream I was at a friends house plucking one out from her lawn. ( I can even tell you which bead it was! Pandora 79383)
Life hasn't been the same since. Iam ADDICTED! to buying, learning and sharing all the information I can about each of the range of beads I have in store. Iam addicted and passionate!
So where does it go from here???????????????????????????????
power 2 us ladies who know how we deserve to be treated!!
