Being a merchant.

I’m a merchant, now, but I haven’t always been one. Straight out of high school, I interned as a deck officer on a commercial container ship out of South Africa. Then I was an officer in the Rhodesian military during the bush war in the 1970s. After the war ended, I emigrated to the U.S. (California) and after a few months working in construction and as a tow truck driver, I settled into a retail loss prevention work with a large national department store chain, working my way up into middle management. Then after graduating from law school, and passing the state bar, I became a trial attorney. Finally, after retiring from that, I joined my wife’s retail bead business full time and became a merchant. And I liked it. I could sell, and sell well.Between us, we became importers, and traveled the world searching for beads, buying, creating, designing, beads and buttons from factories, or buy from warehouses and markets. Not only beads and buttons, but glassware also. Mostly we go to the Czech Republic to find these items, but also Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy. We also went to Latvia, z Lithuania and Poland to find Amber. On the beach, in the water, and in factories and markets. Amber nuggets, Amber beads, jewelry, buttons. Of course, in our hunt, we would find other things like clothing, hats, eyeglasses, dolls, suncatchers, toys, maps, books, coins, stamps, and we would buy them, mostly for resale, but occasionally for ourselves. Like oil paintings And art.We also go to Hong Kong, Thailand, and the Philipinnes for pearls, gemstones, wood and shell beads. Beads and buttons are our main business, but like I said at the beginning, we are merchants… so during our travels, we keep our eyes open for other things.

when it came to beads in Europe, we read books, and knew that we had to go to the Czech z republic and Germany for glass beads, and Italy for different glass beads. And we read where in Italy, Germany and Czech Republic to go to find them. But the factories did not advertise, so we had to hunt for them. We met some local bead agents in the towns, but they were almost useless, they could only take us to factories that they knew. They needed referrals to get into other factories. But we were brash Americans. We just saw glass rods on the front of buildings nestled in the forest, along side the road, or broken glass beads scattered on a gravel driveway, and we would go up and knock on the door.And introduce ourselves and say we wanted to buy beads. In this way we quickly knew most of the factories in Czech Republic. And Germany. But while we were finding all the bead factories and pressing huts, we also found glass factories, that blew hollow glass jewelry boxes, perfume bottles, crystal drinking glasses and bowls, Christmas ornaments, chandelier trimmings and glass sculpture pieces. And of course, we bought something at all the places we found. Digging around in antique warehouses, we found brass filigree, rhinestone cabochons, brooches, jewelry, steampunk watch parts, puppets, dolls, all kind of strange and wonderful things, that we had to have. In Austria we found the last glass teddy bear eye maker, and of course bought some, and all these wonderful items that weren’t beads or buttons we sold. And our customers gobbled them up.

Because I come from Africa, when I took my wife Jme to visit my homeland, we came across stone and wood sculptures of animals and people, and we bought those, as well as worked with an artist to make carved stone beads, which we bought. We also bought some woven grads baskets, Batonka tribal baskets, which I knew from my war days in Binga, and sold them so well we continued to import thousands of them for years. When we could not get anymore, we bought Hausa baskets from Ghana, baskets from Uganda, and then baskets from Afghanistan. They were so beautiful, we could not resist. And neither could our customers. One year we attended an international bead conference in Istanbul, Turkey, and when everyone stayed close to home in the hotel or the conference room, we ventured into the city and found factories that made silver filigree beads, evil eye beads and pendants, and little purses to hold jewelry. We not only bought them to sell, we also arranged a tour for interested bead people at the conference to go see the factories themselves. We also found the famous spice bazaar and all the Turkish Delight candy you could imagine, barrels of it, giant heaps. And yes, we bought lots. To be honest, we ate most of them ourselves.

on a second trip to South Africa we stumbled across some doll makers, and bought a lot of them. Ethnic Zulu dolls, mostly small, but one was life sized, wearing children size tennis shoes, and lots of beads. While driving through Louisiana one year, we found a warehouse filled with Mardi Gras beaded throw necklaces, so we scooped those up. In Hong Kong, we discovered tea houses, where they were selling collectible purple clay tea pots. Each tea house had a different set of pots for sale, so every year we went back to buy pearls and hunted for teapots to buy and then sell. We also bought tea, which you buy as an investment, and eventually sell back to the tea houses for a profit. A large profit! Who knew?

Anyway, being a merchant is addictive, and it gives you an excuse to travel around the world to find stuff to buy and then sell. And it gives you memories that last your whole life . What a fun business to be in. Oh, and then there was the time…. It never ends.