Website: beadaholique.com

The Beadaholique story started with a shoebox tucked under a bed in Sarah Diamond’s Santa Monica apartment. It was 1999. The shoebox was half full of beads, a tiny warehouse of sorts from which Sarah had begun selling on the new auction site, eBay. I had stopped by one evening to ask if she wanted to catch a movie, but she was busy shipping out a handful of orders. Hmm. I had noticed the mail she received and the pile of little brown envelopes she shipped out every three or four days. And all those baggies of colorful beads in that old shoebox. I asked if she wanted some help, and we were off!

Over the course of a few months that tiny shoebox became a file cabinet. (I still have that file cabinet in my office today.) I answered customers’ emails and we hired a friend that sat at the kitchen table and counted out bags of beads while Sarah created auction listings. The file cabinet became the spare room in her apartment, and soon the entire apartment. We hired more friends and then bought a house which ultimately couldn’t accommodate our growth after only a few fast paced years.

Chris and SarahThis picture was taken as we moved into our first warehouse in Glendale, California. Within three years we were again bursting at the seams and broke through the walls to take over a second and then a third adjacent warehouse.

Now, seventeen years later, Beadaholique ships thousands of orders each day to beading hobbyists and jewelry makers that find us on multiple marketplaces in 85 countries. Many of the friends that helped us as we began are still with us. Lidia, who used to clean Sarah’s apartment, is now our Inventory Supervisor who manages her own team. John, who used to do mail, is now the company’s Systems Manager and programmer. It has been the most personally rewarding experience I have known to work with so many smart, talented and fun people and to see how we’ve grown as individuals as well as a company.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to all of our friends, many of whom have shopped with us since “the early days.” It means the world to us that we can serve you.

And it’s still a blast to go to work!