About
The Bead Fetish

(click on all images to enlarge)

In The Beginning…

I have literally loved beads since I was a child. My Nana would take me to hobby stores in the late 1960's, where we would pick out beads that she would buy for us. We would take them home and make jewelry. She bought me my first bead loom when I was 10 years old.

Fast forward to1980 when Kim and Scott met…

We would go to yard sales together for fun. I started getting really excited about finding beautiful old beads. I began scouring thrift shops and yard sales for any and every glass or crystal bead I could find. I became absolutely obsessed! One day Scott took me to my first bead store. I had never seen anything like it and I thought I was in heaven! Jewelry finally made sense to me. All the parts and beads were right there. I bought my first pair of rosary pliers (which I still have), headpins and all the findings, and of course, beads! I went home, taught myself how to make earrings, made a little card for them to go on and named them "Classie Glassies". I took one look at that card and thought, "This is a marketable product". Soon I took a few dozen pair of earrings on handmade cards to a consignment shop and the owner took them. By 1984 I was designing and selling to major chain and department stores, and not on consignment! During those years I must have traveled to every bead shop in I could find in Southern CA. I dreamt of having my own bead shop and about what I would or wouldn't have in mine. Being a designer I especially liked the shops where I could find unusual and funky beads.

The Bead Fetish Lives…

In 1989 we moved to Northern California and we began designing and selling earrings to local boutiques. Once again, the bead shop idea was beckoning me. One day I found a little shop and a few months later we opened our first bead shop, The Bead Fetish, in San Rafael, CA. Scott built the displays and I bought glass dishes from thrift stores of every shape and size to put the beads in. Though small, it was very charming. We continued to expand until 1997 when decided to sell the shop, and pursue a wholesale pewter casting business we had started several years earlier.

A year after we sold the shop we moved the pewter foundry a few hours away to Sacramento, CA. By 2000, my bead shop urge was tugging at me once again. We decided to open a small shop in Midtown, the trendy artsy area near downtown, and see how things went. One thing lead to another, we outgrew our shop, licensed out the copyrights to our pewter designs, and focused full time on our newest Bead Fetish!

"The Most amazing Shop I've Ever Seen…"

The Bead Fetish is a bead shop you can lose yourself in. Our goal was to create an authentic atmosphere that reflects us and our style, where our friends (all our customers) could shop and feel absolutely comfortable and welcome. It's important for us to have a sales staff that is helpful, genuinely nice and treats people how we like to be treated. After opening and remodeling five different shops (because we can't sit still) we've learned that this is what we do well. We own a bead store and probably always will in some form or another. No matter how many beads you stock, someone will always be looking for that one bead you don't have. I guess that's what keeps owning a bead shop challenging, fun and exciting!